theblackdragon

@yorumi: the only point being missed is my own by you. why did the spirits inhabiting them have to be male and female themselves?

I'm not trying to say that old games should be rewritten. Those ships have sailed. I _am_saying that even as a child, before I knew what a feminist was, I questioned why characters had to be the gender they were in a game, and I know I'm not the only child who did so. Now that the technology has improved, I'd like to see a choice offered for players to experience a gaming world with the fullest immersion possible. I think it would be a trifle and it would make a lot of people very happy. I'm sorry you don't agree, but you're as welcome to your opinion as I am.

@Senario: Since you're using Zelda and Midna as examples: Why can Link never be a heroine? What aspects of his character insist that he be male? What part of the game is enriched by a man saving a woman that could not be as well played out by switching the gender roles? What part of Midna or Zelda could not possibly have been played by a male? Are not males allowed to be wise and knowing, can they not also be crafty imps who tease people into getting their way and then become pretty or handsome humanoid Twilight people when the game is over? I'm not sure if you understand where I'm coming from, but these are things I've asked myself before. This is how I feel.

Also, the stereotype of the 'wise woman' is not all that great either — it's about on the level of the 'know-nothing meat-shield man'. Women can be brainless and fight well, and men can be wise and all-knowing but do nothing but be captured and used as bait for the hero/ine. Being locked into stereotypes and cliches does not help.

@HugoSmits: You've completely closed yourself off. It saddens me, but as I said before you are free to develop as you please. That is your right.

@Yorumi: I'm not sure where you're getting my 'bias' from since what I'm wanting from my games is a choice of gender options for the player, not to dictate what they choose.

Assuming you're referring to the Shulk/Fiona relationship, why does Shulk need to be male? Cis versus identified gender issues aside, at what point in the game is it a requirement that he have male bits and/or produce a child from his own seed? And for replacing pronouns, is there no version of CSS for in-game text? I'd imagined there was something of the sort in terms of games that had you input a name for the player.

Regarding palette swapping, you're right — I'm no dev and I have no idea what's actually involved behind the scenes, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that had gender options in gaming been an issue like this back in the 80's and discussed on a global level the way they are here with the internet, I'd imagine it'd be much closer to solved and/or balanced in the here and now. However, the gaming world has grown much since then, and I look forward to the coming years now that it's definitely something being actively discussed by both the community at large and devs themselves. For good or ill, at least it's being discussed and the option given by some. Here's hoping someday that becomes 'all'.

And I honestly don't care which sort of characters you prefer to play. Play what you want however you please, it's not my concern :3

@Yorumi: Regarding SMB2, it was just Mario's dream. Why did he get to have 'reality' and the princess the dream? It didn't make sense to me when I was little — and I'm talking about small children, not so much teenagers or grownups who would understand what a 'feminist' is and perhaps consider themselves one (or not). I'm talking about kids who are too young to fully understand how the world works and question things innocently. As for DQ and FF, I'm afraid I've always disliked the DQ series, and FF I didn't get into until I was in high school. as for FFVI specifically, why could Terra have not been male? Again, maybe my imagination is more flexible than most, but other than the pronouns and the artwork I don't see why that character in terms of the story absolutely, positively had to be locked into their one set gender — or any other character, for that matter. Maybe I'm used to switching things around in my head in order to immerse myself properly, i guess.

I'm not so much about 'female' as i am about 'choice'. perhaps I worded myself poorly before, but I think you're reading something else in my comment if you're getting sexualization and male characters running around hulked out and half-naked while people complain about large-chested half-naked women in games (not once in my comment did I mention that tangent so I'm not sure why you've brought it up, but for the record I'm not okay with the idea of the 'battle thong' for either gender without other same-level gear options present). I don't see why it's bad to ask for a character to be male if it's originally written as female, at no point did I make that claim. Ask for gender-swapped character selections all you like, and I'll do the same! we'll only be richer for it. :3

FE:A handled the choice brilliantly I thought, it really was a lot of fun perhaps because i was more able to identify with the Female Avatar than I would have been had we been given a male avatar only. Same for Pokemon X/Y, I've had a lot of fun playing as a girl (though I know Pokemon has already offered the choice between boy or girl since Crystal, it didn't back in R/B/Y or G/S). call it superficial, but having the option to choose which gender you'd like to play can really bring the player closer to the game.

@HugoSmits: Why are you not asking these people who say 'because I'm a feminist' what they want out of a female-option character? Have you tried at all? You've been talking all day about it, but have you ever officially opened yourself up to your audience about the topic of gender options in your games? I know it can be a touchy subject, but if people are honestly bothering you with poor feedback, perhaps it's time for you to have it out with them head-on and get it over with, and if all they want is a sprite swap, then what's so hard about giving them the option? it's a quick 'problem solved'.

@HugoSmits: Not all people who would genuinely like to have more female options available in gaming may even identify as 'feminists' — little girls (and boys) even now look at the screen and sometimes wonder why they're forced to play as a character of this or that set gender when the pronouns could easily be switched and nothing else about the game would change. I know. I grew up staring at my games, at the TV screen in front of me, wondering why Link always had to be male and why the game was 'the legend of zelda' when the princess slept or sat on her rear the whole game through, why Fox McCloud had to be a guy, why I had to be a boy to play Pokemon, why Mario always had to save the princess — man oh man, SMRPG was a leap forward for Toadstool!

I've seen Metroid waved at people like me, the 'Samus is a strong female character' argument, but I don't like Metroid games, I find them annoying. I like Mario-style platforming, and I enjoy Zelda-style adventuring. I don't self-identify as a feminist, but I don't see what the harm would be in having suggested a female Beck option for this game — or any other gender-swapping action for any other game, for that matter. Some people try to claim that some game stories couldn't work the other way around, but I choose to ask 'why' instead of accepting it as fact. I suppose my imagination is hyperactive or something :3

You keep saying that you don't see how 'feminists' asking does anything to 'help the situation'. You want us to shut up and be silent? Your privilege is showing. You're wanting people to stop asking and to be patient and wait and hope for game devs to come around on their own... except that's not how it works. you don't get the things you want unless you put the idea out there, unless you ask for it. how else can we expect people to know? Devs aren't psychics.

You as a game dev have the right to ignore us, people will still buy your games anyway if they deem them fun or interesting enough no matter what the gender(s) of its protagonist(s), but if the simple act of people asking truly bothers you so much, perhaps you could try listening sometime, consider the ideas being expressed instead of automatically becoming defensive and shutting yourself down.

I get where you're coming from regarding a creative work. It's your baby, your perfect little creation, and how dare some upstart plebian suggest that it could be made better somehow, right? I feel the same way myself when someone comes along when i'm in the middle of a drawing and pops off with unsolicited suggestions, it pisses me right the hell off. However, there have been times when those suggestions have genuinely spawned new ideas for me and have changed my project(s) for the better, and all things considered I cannot be thankful enough. If someone's asking or suggesting, absolutely tune them out if you think what they have to say doesn't hold merit, but telling the world at large to sit down and shut up, how many other amazing ideas or projects would never come to their fullest potential without some sort of spark or input? :/

They can always fire her if they feel the game is worse off with her on the team. I'm willing to give her a shot and see what impact she may have on the game in the end. I have no problems whatsoever with the idea of having a member of the dev team be someone sensitive to social issues and their potential impact on gaming as a whole. It's Inafune's baby in the end, and what he says will go. I'm confident that he'd never release what he felt was a sub-standard game, not now that he's free of Capcom.

@Excep7ional: 'dudebro' is the new 'hardcore', just another label to be slapped onto people who choose to play things the person using the term would not. it's not worth your time or acknowledgement.

I wish people would stop labeling one another and just play what interests them. if the VGX awards don't interest you, fine — there's plenty of other things to watch (or hell, to play).

@Super_Gravy: I honestly have no idea. I'm not really all that social a person when i'm busy with a game, so I hope not — the fewer distractions I have bothering me, the better :3

@Super_Gravy: Knock yourself out :3 I haven't updated my 3DS yet, but that's what i'll probably do if Miiverse turns out to be too obnoxious :3

Miiverse is like any other sort of social media venture, you're not going to be able to fully avoid spoilers without avoiding either the service or certain sections thereof. Nintendo is apparently trying to look out for things on their end, but they're only human and things will slip here and there, so we've gotta do our part on our end as well if we really want to avoid being spoiled for a game. I know to avoid Facebook and Tumblr if I'm waiting to see an episode of something popular, and I know to avoid certain threads and articles for games here at NL or over at GameFAQs if I don't want to be spoiled on accident. It's common sense.

The bottom line is that you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't make a point of attempting to interact with other users who are already playing a game. If it's a well-programmed game, you won't need the extras or goodies to get through it on your own at all, and if it's truly a great game it'll be worth the playthrough afterward with the extra features and goodies once you know what's coming anyway.

@rjejr: It's not a part of our Community Rules to stop users from posting spoilers, so that's not something we actively patrol for or ban people over, though if the comment is reported we'll step in and edit it so that the spoilery content is clearly marked, and if users make nuisances out of themselves and persistently harass others over it we will step in to stop that behavior. The last time I had to temp-ban a user over obnoxious spoiling was for Pokemon X/Y, if you must know :3 Ant has the Spoiler tag now for the forums, so we at NL are now good to go.

@rjejr: It's Nintendo's thing, and they're gonna run it how they like. If this is something they want their moderation team to handle, it's what they want it to handle. I still fail to see the fuss :/

Also, we don't know how this works on the back end. It looks like everything's been streamlined from the front, but it could very well still work the exact same way it did before behind the scenes for all we know. again, it's not worth the upset.

@rjejr, @dogpigfish: looks like they're just streamlining the process to me. It's not as if they'll be forced to hand down the same punishments just because it's all under the same dropdown, so what's the big deal?

also, I don't think you guys fully realize what they're opening themselves up to now that they're adding 3DS owners to the potential Miiverse userbase too, haha — they can't be everywhere, so it's reasonable to expect that a post here and there will slip past them while they're dealing with other problems in the queue. they're probably just trying to make it easier for existing and future staff to deal with the increased amount of users :3

this must mean more special edition consoles are on the way, lol~

@zerks: @zach gave us the lowdown on the forums a day or two ago iirc... looks like i'll be grabbing some stocking stuffers later this week D:

Home Depot, Ruby Tuesdays, and McDonalds... those locations, i get it (kinda — at least the local Home Depot is right next to Target and Best Buy). But the Greyhound station? Really? I suppose they don't realize the bus station here in town is where the local fuzz go to catch all their drug dealers and prostitutes, lol. Here's hoping no one gets mugged for their 3DS trying to get those Nintendo Zone hits!

@TheRealThanos: Thank you very much for clarifying, because i had honestly been quite dismayed — you had seemed a decent sort of person, and seeing you make a comment about a woman in the kitchen and then that jab about suicide afterward (account or no), it didn't help at all. Unfortunately we didn't grow up together, so I have no idea how you were educated as a child to behave regarding people of any gender... therefore, I can only take such comments at face value in terms of enforcing our Community Rules, y'know?

and now, i'm going to bed. D: hopefully nothing will explode overnight, haha~

@TheRealThanos: haha, i thought you were the one snipping at me there. my bad if you weren't :3

anyway, the reason he said he had a copy of your original comment in that instance was because he did — the original e-mail that was generated immediately after you hit the 'reply' button. subsequent edits to the same comment do not generate new e-mails, or at least they haven't in my experience. i hope i'm making sense! :3

edit: haha, no big — glad we've got it all hashed out finally. whew~ (and no extra e-mail in my inbox for your edit btw :3)

@TheRealThanos: and if you had read my response to you correctly, you'd see i'm telling you that doesn't happen — not in my experience. the user in question was likely talking about the fact that when they clicked to reply to your post from the e-mail, your post was suddenly different in some key area where they had a bone to pick and they pounced. when you @ someone, they only get one copy of that comment in their inbox — the very first time you post it.

@TheRealThanos: ah, my mistake then — i had thought you were worried about loading your target user's inbox with e-mails, one for each edit. you're right, they only receive a copy of your comment the first time it's posted. if that's something you're trying to avoid, carry on :3

@TheRealThanos, @kirk: actually, i'm pretty sure editing an @ comment won't resend the e-mail — at least i certainly hope not, for the sake of anyone i @ at least! i've seen other users edit their comments toward myself without receiving multiple notifications though. :3

@TheRealThanos: haha, looks like she couldn't take the idea that not everyone was thrilled with Nintendo as they stand right now. Ah well, perhaps now she'll be able to fully focus her attention on that website she kept trying to plug every so often :3

@Gerbwmu: haha, your (e) works too. it's been so long since i've had to fight over a console with someone i'd forgotten that option

@Kirk: Do your wants include 85-degree beachgoing weather? because i'm freezing atm and could soooo go for some warmth right now D:

@Mary_Yati: The way i see it, if you're talking about playing games instead of actually playing them, you're (a) stuck and asking for help in your game, (b) offering advice to players who may be stuck, (c) you're at work and unable to get away with playing your game, or (d) you don't have a game you want to play at the moment, so you have nothing better to do than talk. me, I'm under option (c) at the moment. since this isn't GameFAQs nor is it a Guide sort of article, I'd imagine most of the people commenting here are under option (d), they've got the console but no game(s) they want to play are available. That's why so much negativity and displeasure may be expressed by others, they genuinely have nothing better to do than attempt to make themselves heard on the internet.

Nintendo isn't stupid — stuck in the Dark Ages on certain points, perhaps, but not stupid. They are listening, no matter the method of communication we use — Twitter, Facebook, Google+, random forums on the internet — but the bottom-line best way to get a message across to them is via your wallet. If that means you buy something else because another company has games you want to play on offer, that's what it means. Competition in the gaming marketplace is a wonderful thing, that's why I'm saying that we should all be buying and playing only what we want to play. We shouldn't be pressured into purchasing a console just to support a company for their sake. If they want to remain relevant, they should be digging deep to create the networking bonds they need in order to get the games we want to play onto their consoles, they should be releasing the features we've been begging for for years now (unified accounts should've been a reality back when the DSi was new, for pete's sake), they should have worked harder to fully separate the Wii from the Wii U so that this confusion over the name did not occur in the first place. Mistakes were made, and now it's time to move forward. Give the people what they want, and the support will come.

@KIrk: i can easily see your point of view there (though I was satisfied with my Wii) — the DSi wound up with next to no retail titles, which disappointed me quite a bit, and the first year of the 3DS was awful (or at least it would've been without the great DS titles that were released within that time, haha). With that to go off of, I chose to hold off on purchasing a Vita, and it turned out to be a smart choice on my part because there are no Vita games that I want to play at the moment. I've held off on purchasing a Wii U as well, though at least there's hope on the horizon for me. whenever X hits, I will be a very, very happy camper :3

@Mary_Yati: I hate to burst your bubble, but I don't think he's laughing with you. Buying a Wii U does not automatically give you a line of direct communication with Nintendo executives, nor should we expect that of it. Buying a Wii U should only give us access to games and features we want to play. If that day has already come for you, great. If you're still waiting for that day, that's great too. As long as you're playing what you want to play and you're having fun, you've won.

Hey guys, I'm going to ask this once: Stop going out of your way to make your arguments personal. Leave the social commentary at home, and if you feel someone is not worth your time, stop giving them the satisfaction of a reply. Thanks in advance!

how in the hell could this possibly be cost effective? i'm wondering what this sort of delivery is going to cost as opposed to plain old USPS shipping, lol.

that said, for people talking about others shooting them down to collect the packages — my guess is that (a) they're gonna have these puppies tagged with GPS locators and whatnot, and (b) it's gonna cost a pretty penny to replace 'em. The risks (getting busted and earning jailtime for stealing someone's mail and destroying an expensive piece of equipment — depending on how expensive determines whether it's a misdemeanor or felony iirc) will probably outrun the potential gains for this sort of thing in terms of the average joe, and even so it's not like people don't already steal boxes off of doorsteps, out of mailboxes, or even straight out the back of trucks. look at Netflix, it's so easy to spot those little red envelopes and know there's a movie inside, and yet the service thrived (though i think Instant has kinda knocked it back a peg, lol) in the face of thieves. heck, i've seen stories in the news where the mailperson themselves just kept packages to take home. thieves are gonna steal no matter what, so Amazon may as well give the drone service a shot and see how it goes.

Get the hell out, no way! I'm loving RF4, I hope someone big snags their IPs up so that they'll still have jobs and RF5 will still be in play

@HawkeyeWii: It could have something to do with what you watch and how, and also where in the world you are — I've been getting hammered by commercials for SM3DW and Wii U while watching Hulu lately, and also that PS4 commercial over and over. I can't quite remember every single thing I've watched lately, but i know i've watched South Park, American Dad, Family Guy, WWE programming (RAW, SD, NXT), and reruns of Hell's Kitchen via Hulu lately. Haven't seen a single Xbone advertisement.

I also remember from years ago being home in the afternoons, Nintendo ran a lot of commercials during kids' mid-afternoon programming, and they may be doing so again if you tend to watch TV more in the evenings or no one in your family really watches kids' programming. I was so sick of those DSi commercials, especially that Beyonce one, lol.

@CasuallyDressed: This is actually one of the first reviews I've seen in a while where we don't have a stream of people piling in to complain about the number at the end. Let's not be the ones to start that mess ourselves on this rare occasion :3

Anyway, with my love of all things platform-y, I may wind up picking this up (if RF4 ever releases me from its clutches, haha).

@Oddy: You may want to check around, actually — there are a lot of stores that will be open on Thanksgiving this year for the Black Friday shenanigans, lol. Who knows what may or may not be open in your area :3

@JAG1981 it may work that way at your store (street dated items not able to be placed on the floor and you being forced to sell an item to a customer just because they caught an early glimpse of the item), but not at all stores. People will complain all the time that 'well this store here was able to do blah-blah-blah for me and now you at your store can't do the same?' well, no, we can't — it's against our store policy (though i won't be the one to tell 'em no, that's up to a manager lol). if you want to shop at a store that will do blah-blah-blah for you, shop at that store, y'know? dealing with that sort of thing is just one of the many joys of working retail :3

@shigulicious: i hear you re: crowded backstock areas, especially gearing up toward Black Friday! I work at Kohl's, and our dock and upstairs are seriously stuffed to the gills with all sorts of crap that can't go out until Thanksgiving.

From a Wal-Mart customer's standpoint, this is common practice — I remember in particular the Wal-Mart i go to had copies of Pokemon Black/White 2 out on their shelf for a week before the release date, and they had a sticker on the glass saying when the game would be available. Thank goodness that sticker was there, btw — the games had been out and apparently not ringing in the register for so long that the associate I asked to get a copy for me on release day had to be reminded (via sticker) that it was finally release day, lol. it's great to be able to see which wal-marts will have the bundles on release day, though, so you can (hopefully) swoop in at midnight and grab 'em :3

to be honest, the ability to avoid permadeath was the main reason i chose to take the plunge on a copy of FE:A in the first place, and i was very, very pleasantly surprised. I'd always avoided FE games due to the permadeath thing; i can't stand the thought of losing people but i don't have the time to invest in a 'perfect' run of any game. i hate having to repeat battles, and having to repeat them until everyone makes it out alive sounds more like a chore than fun to me.

i was very happy to see Awakening given the options it was, that way everyone — long-time fans and newbies like me — had the option to play the game however they felt it would be the most fun. I hope Awakening gets a sequel eventually, i'd love to play through another game like that :3

@unrandomsam: While diversity in this commercial campaign may not be an issue for you, not important or irrelevant in your eyes, it does seem to be an issue for others. It's great that you don't have a problem, but you (and JuanitoShet, and Giygas_95) do not speak for everyone, i'm afraid.

@JuanitoShet: It's a legitimate request that doesn't deserve to be pooh-pooh'd. Perhaps they'll remedy the lack of diversity in following commercials within the same campaign.

I love this game (Hakuouki) already, and this 3DS version wasn't bad, but to be honest I found myself missing the PSP version — its single screen is a bit larger, which is nice, and the second-screen stuff feels a bit tacked-on in this version. The photo-booth stuff was meh at best, the 3D as well, and I really wish there had been more to the little extra stories you unlock. I just wish there was more side-stories to go with the (already amazing) main story period, haha~

@Kirk: just drop the 'fanboy' BS, that's apparently what the comment deletions and edits have been about. If you don't like someone here, ignore them and move on. If you can't do that, then yes, we will likely cross paths again.

@interneto: chicken-butt! :3
(sorry, i couldn't resist :3)

@interneto: i'm not sure what you mean, but my entire comment was coming from the fact that while I agree with him that there is fat that could be cut from what X/Y has to offer us, there are other aspects of the game that have long since been modified for the better and i do not want to see them go back to the way they were back in R/B/Y (as Sugimori is pointing to that as the general ideal at the moment). am i making any sense? :3

Target also ran a great deal when X/Y came out. i picked up both games, one for me and one for the hubby, and the lady at the register had some kind of coupon that she scanned for me — my total was just over $100-some (with a couple other items i picked up as well as the games) and it brought me down to around $70. I don't remember the specifics of the coupon but i do remember it had something to do with purchasing both games at once. i hadn't known that deal was available, there was no mention of it on their website or anything and i'd been prepared to pay full price, but i was thrilled to pieces when my cashier scanned it!

these deals aside, in no way would i consider Target a 'premier destination for video games in the US'. Video game deals, maybe (and that's if you're only counting brick-and-mortar stores), but just like Toys 'R' Us, a buy-two-get-one deal there only works if you're interested in multiple first-party titles or trying out the dregs of Metacritic. I will say my local Target has better customer service than Best Buy, GameStop, and Wal-Mart combined and i love shopping there when i need certain things they carry that other stores around here don't, but their 3DS section is usually half-empty and they don't seem to carry the niche titles that GameStop and Amazon always have on-hand. if I'm going there, it's usually not for video games (in fact, the reason i'd picked up X/Y from there was because I needed a special kind of soap and a size of plastic cup that only they sell here in this town!).

@interneto: he's talking about going back to gen 1 'simplicity' in the article, and i brought that stuff up to show how some things in the series have changed to be much better since those days and i wouldn't want to go back. If you look at the rest of that paragraph of mine, you'd also note that Flash hasn't been an HM since gen 4 and TMs were made reusable last gen iirc.

i wouldn't mind seeing some of the more complicated pokemon designs simplified down a bit. keep what we've got as-is, what's done is done, but any future ones could stand to be a bit simpler. Fletchling and Inkay were probably my favorites of the new batch this time around mainly because they were so simple. their final evos are a lot more visually complicated, but the charm of those first evolutions sucked me in and kept me using them. Litleo and Pyroar (both male and female) look great, they remind me of Meowth and Persian in terms of design and coloration simplicity. Skitty and Delcatty are a bit more complicated design-wise, but they're still okay because they make up for it in simplicity of coloration. In contrast, Espurr to Meowstic is a visual change too drastic to bear, and Purrloin and Liepard both look absolutely hideous IMO.

Venusaur for a very long time was a turn-off in terms of using Bulbasaur, but I've grown to enjoy mine due to the personality they now show in battle — i don't like discriminating against 'mon due to the way they look, but sometimes i just can't help cringing when i have to add a pokemon i don't visually enjoy to my team(s). i do feel the way battles are displayed now helps to make up for the ugliness of some pokemon in static images (and absolutely enhances the adorableness of others!), so that's a change that's grown on me very much with X/Y and I hope they don't stray from it.

I do greatly enjoy the update to battling and interacting with other users that the PSS brought to the table, I can turn on the 'internet' option anyplace, anywhere to interact instead of visiting a specific spot inside a pokemon center, and trading for specific 'mon or battling with others has seriously never been easier. i like the trainer customization (to a point — let me take off the hat plz). i like the battle chateau and maison and the restaurants you can visit, and i also like the new Friend Safari thing, but the cafes where you basically pay to view pokemon are useless, as are the o-powers, trainer videos, and the 'visiting' portion of Pokemon Amie — i love everything else about Amie, interacting with your different 'mon is really a lot of fun, but having pokemon just slide in and out of your little decorated area all the time is more annoying than anything else, especially when they eat all your Puffs or just give you Puffs instead of cool items.

I think the whole 'mega evolution' thing is a joke. who needs it? it's just a way to dress up old pokemon, and they can be taken down just as quickly by other plain old everyday pokemon. i've made a point so far of not busting out a mega evo in serious online battles; when i win i want to do it old-school, y'know? I kinda wish they'd just given us more meat to the story (team flare was pretty lame overall IMO) or even a few more new pokemon to play with (though i do think keeping the amount of new 'mon in this one relatively low was a good idea; the dexes are bulky enough as-is D: ).

Finally, I agree with whomever is saying that the HM system could stand to be modified. I'm glad they've beefed up the HM moves over the years (they used to be straight-up awful, you'd have to catch something to use as an HM slave because you never wanted to have an HM ruining your pokemon), but i'd still like to see a system where you could maybe teach one HM to a pokemon able to learn it and you could choose to either have the move in their available battle set or have it only usable outside of battle. I like that they made TMs reusable, i like that there's now the option to unlearn HMs, i like that you don't have to force something to learn Flash to get through caves anymore, i just don't like the idea of HMs stinking up perfectly good pokemon in general.

fwiw, i think they're on the right track with X/Y — i haven't played a pokemon game through to being champ since the original G/S. there's plenty that can be shaved down here and there, it's not really one major thing alone that needs to be cut out of the games IMO.

@shaneoh: PrincessSugoi said it somewhere up bear the top of the thread, and Kaze_Memaryu said it in reply #75, next-to-last paragraph. That one in particular was the one i had responded to, because it had landed in my inbox.

That said, this is something that people feel very strongly about, and i have seen neither flamebaiting nor flaming so far, just strong opinion being debated. i have been keeping an eye on this thread, i promise. Put on your 'adult' underpants and debate maturely, please, and if you feel it's too much for you, feel free to comment on something else.

I had no idea there were brick-and-mortar Blockbusters around still — all the ones i ever knew of have long since closed their doors.

i've still got my old Blockbuster card around someplace, it's probably with my library card. i should find that sometime.

Guys, it's not 'flamebaiting'. It's someone with an opinion that differs from your own.

That said, for those of you crying that women should automatically be ok with this, where are all the pretty boys with fantastic bodies and enormous packages? Do we get to 'tickle' them? No? Funny how that works out. /eyeroll

@yamitora1: you ain't kiddin'!

@jeb_leeds: we've got a thread on our forums here where you're welcome to post for specific trades or battles with other users if you like. We've also got our main X/Y FC trading thread here if you'd like to pick up some new friends for the game, and a thread for users looking for specific friend safaris here. You're welcome to participate in any of those threads if you like :3

as for the article at hand, i've wonder traded once and ended up with a Japanese Inkay. wasn't a bad trade, i think i threw out a pidgey or something. i do wish there was an option to turn off the periodic 'ad' that shows up sometimes on the lower screen for o-powers, wonder trades, etc. — i'm usually so focused on the game and it distracts me when it pops up outta nowhere :/

these apps need accounts for users and active moderation. if Nintendo is not prepared to provide this and maintain the service properly so that there are measures available when someone is found to be abusing the service, then they shouldn't bother to provide them in the first place.

Personally I'm surprised Swapnote lasted for this long since it's completely unmoderated. I'd think that 3DS Miiverse would be able to replace it, and since Miiverse is moderated, they won't have any problems with potential child porn or lewd and lascivious behavior toward/with a minor.

@uel: it's in the first paragraph of our Community Rules, a convenient link to which is located beneath the 'reply' box, right next to the button.