So let’s visit Yahoo.

Or Yahoo!, as it is correctly written I suppose.  I always leave out the exclamation point.

Yahoo seems to have some sort of list in its top stories on the main page.  Things like Signs You’re a Green Hypocrite and such.  But once in a while something related to video games makes an appearance.

There were two such lists in the last week that I thought were interesting.

The first was the Most Overhyped Video Games of All Time.

You’ll have ..read the full article

Pokemon.com has announced a new Nintendo WiFi download event for Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver.

From July 31st through August 27th you can download the Enigma Stone for HeartGold and SoulSilver.

By default, the Pokemon Latias only appears in HeartGold while Latios only appears in SoulSilver.  But the Enigma Stone sets off a chain of events in the game that leads to an encounter with the Pokemon that does not generally appear in game.

So if you have HeartGold you will encounter Latios, while ..read the full article

The Site

This past month I wrote about all sorts of things.  I wrote about exploration in Middle-earth, a 1500 word review of The Agency: Covert Ops, FarmVille, Hulkageddon III, the freeing of PLEX (with an obscure musical reference as a title, which nobody has yet mentioned), StarCraft II, and the ever hoped for flying car.

And which of my posts made it to WordPress.com’s front page?

There, in the upper right hand corner

Yeah, the damn octopus.  That is what made the ..read the full article

The Site

I posted a little bit more this month.  In fact, I posted about as much as a usually do in a given month.

I have mostly Blizzard to thank for this.  Their screwing up parental controls and bypassing security protecting them got me on a roll.

I think the biggest change to the actual site is that there is a link to my Facebook account way down the side bar.  My Facebook profile features this picture.

Wilhelm, circa 1988

I only mention ..read the full article

I have now defeated all of the gym leaders in Pokemon SoulSilver.  There are 16 gym leaders in Johto and Kanto and defeating each of them is part of the path to completing the game.

Each town has its own Pokemon gym, and each gym has its own puzzle which you need to solve to reach the gym leader.  Once you defeat a gym leader, you are awarded some cash, a technical machine (TM) which is a device that contains a ..read the full article

The Winner’s Path download event ended on Saturday, but not new event has yet been announced on Pokemon.com.  So I decided to check and see what was up.

I started up Pokemon SoulSilver, chose the Mystery Gift option, selected Receive Gift , and specified Get Via Nintendo WFC.

After a few seconds of checking, the screen came back and said it was downloading Make a Wish Jirachi.

Jirachi Arrives

It looks to be the similar to the Jirachi they were giving out in ..read the full article

I was going to put up a post about how quickly Nintendo sent out the replacement pokewalker after my daughter’s initial one went through the wash this past weekend.

I put in the order on Sunday night and it was here on Wednesday.  Not bad, considering I chose the cheapest shipping option.

But then, less than 24 hours after the arrival of the new pokewalker, something happened.

My daughter and I were headed to the park.  I was walking and she was racing ..read the full article

There are relatively few instructions provided for the care of the pokewalker device that comes with Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver.

The biggest picture on the guide… in fact the only picture on the guide… that comes with the pokewalker indicates that you should not immerse the device in water.

How not to clean your pokewalker

Okay, the message is a little confused.  I mean, the picture seems to indicate that you should place the pokewalker in the washing machine, a sentiment backed ..read the full article

I arrived home this afternoon to find our LEGO pokewalker project had been knocked off its location and lay smashed to pieces on the floor.

No Free Steps Today!

This appears to be part of an ongoing anti-cheating campaign initiated by one of our cats.

The suspect in this brutal attack on our LEGO project declined to answer questions from his daytime perch atop the six foot tall bookcase in my office.

Maintaining his right to remain silent

My daughter and I will ..read the full article

This past Saturday was the Pokemon Regional Championships in San Francisco.

A Pokemon event in my area

Only it wasn’t really in San Francisco.

As is often the case, San Francisco was given as the location because if they said they were holding it in San Mateo, which is 30 minutes down the highway, most people wouldn’t know what they were talking about.  People barely know the way to San Jose, which is the 10th largest city in the US.

So it was ..read the full article

As mentioned in the comments on the previous post, our cats seem to enjoy breaking our LEGO projects.

That is our cat Fred.  Over the weekend he didn’t pay any attention to the Pokewalker machine.  This morning, however, it became the center of his world.  If the Flip Video battery had not been drained I would have made a movie out of this assault.

The title of this post has two words.  The second is “twinking.”

The definition of “twinking” varies, usually landing somewhere between “cheater” and “opportunist. “  Generally though, in gaming, it is a term used to describe the action of using every resource available to boost the strength, power, level, or wealth of a character or other in-game player manifestation.  The resources in question are not always available to other players, which is when descriptions tend towards the cheating end of the ..read the full article

The Pokewalker Yellow Forest event ended yesterday, but in what may be a sign of things to come with Pokewalker routes, a new WiFi download was announced today.

Called the Winner’s Path, it features more pokemon that you may need to complete your national pokedex.

This download event runs from May 6, 2010 through to June 25th, 2010.  Nintendo has included a guide to the pokemon and items you can collect on this route and how many steps you need to take ..read the full article

Pokemon.com has announced the first post-release WiFi event for Pokemon HeartGold and Soulsilver.

From April 1st through May 5th you can download a Pokewalker route called the Yellow Forest.

OMG Pikachu!

This new Pokewalker route features, as the name implies, Pikachu.  There are even some special variations of Pikachu you can catch when walking this route.

This is NOT an in-store event, this is only available through direct Nintendo WiFi, which means you have to have configured your DS to connect to the ..read the full article

The Site

The site actually hit another milestone in March.  TAGN has passed the one million page view mark.

Now, as I have said before, I generally do not write about the numbers this blog gets.  Some bloggers may be envious of reaching that number of page views while others will be dismissive, having reached that number in a shorter time or exceeding that number many times over in the same time frame.

But a million of anything is a lot, so just ..read the full article

I mentioned to my wife that If our daughter was good and finished her homework, perhaps she could be allowed to open up her copy of the new Pokemon game to get started.

With that incentive, it was no surprise to find that my daughter had already gotten her first gym badge in the game and that her main Pokemon was level 14.

Of course I had to jump in immediately.  My daughter has Pokemon HeartGold and I have SoulSilver, having learned ..read the full article

They actually arrived yesterday after the long wait, but were kept out of sight until somebody finished all of her homework.

Pre-Order Bags with Figurines

They will be torn open soon.

And wrecking my credibility.

A couple of months back my daughter and I took all of the loose change in the house to a nearby CoinStar station with the intent of getting an Amazon.com gift certificate.  CoinStar takes a percentage of your total amount if you want cash, but if you will take a gift certificate from any one of a number of retail establishments, that fee gets waved.

In pouring out our LEGO store bulk brick container full of coins, our ..read the full article