NCS 11/29 - FUCK YES!

Two words: YES! YES!

I had been flopping like a fish about whether I should give Konami another chance or not. I thought "eh, one pack couldn't hurt" since I had a dream about YGO last night/this morning. Flipped my British pound coin until it approved of a pack, and check out the result! (For those unaware, the Secret Rare of the pack, Naturia Beast, is worth twenty bucks upwards.)

The other reason I gave Konami a chance is because of something that will be coming out December 7th. More on that when it happens, but let's just say that Duel Disks are getting closer and closer.

Did the same thing with Pokemon. That little binder is cool; I love the Legendary Beasts so much! It's also getting to the point where I can feel whether a pack will have a holofoil or not. Love the coin and a personal little secret of mine. Hint: It's not a pocket scale!

Also got my brother the Marik deck. I don't know why his wife will not let him spend money on one of Konami's better moves, especially since the whole family is hooked on games. Mirror Force needed to be a common a LONG time ago.

Reshriam and Zekrom in the Macy's Parade.

This year's Thanksgiving Day parade featured the usual Pikachu, but also sported balloons of Reshriam and Zekrom, the two cover Pokemon for the upcoming Black and White versions. Pikachu's nothing new; Reshiram and Zekrom have me worried.

To the one YouTube commenter who said that "they must have done this for Palkia and Dialga," I looked around. It does not look like they did. This means that Pokemon Black and White are getting some very special treatment; those balloons have to cost somewhere in the 6 digit range, if not more. Getting put in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is a lot of publicity; that's some major money that went into advertising the two new games.

Having been a diehard Pokemon supporter (for a while, it was the only game on my GBC/GBASP/DS) since Gen I, I know how Nintendo moves. They have always teased us with a few of the new Pokemon before releasing the games. They have never made as massive a move as this before.

Nintendo has been acting waaayyyy too bitchy about Pokemon Black/White. First they isolated Isshu completely from the other regions; then they made the declaration that only Isshu Pokemon could be used in the next World Championship. They have wounded Serebii.net and PokeBeach for making money off of their images; while slightly true, why have they never complained before? Given how anal they are being about these two games, one really has to wonder:

Are they worth it?

So...Let me get this straight...

Jack Atlas is fighting a bad Monferno knockoff. He and Yusei summon the miraculous power of evil-looking Quetzalcoatl (really, subbers? You couldn't catch that reference in a series about Aztec art?) to create an "impossible" monster not only of immense power, but using the power of his enemy. Said monster consists of horrible CGI on par with that of the Battle Spirits anime, only doing something remotely cool when summoned or attacking. Then, deus ex machina dragon gets them both out of the crumbling building...or something.

Now I remember why I stopped watching Yu-Gi-Oh!. No, that Scar-Red Nova Dragon really doesn't look any cooler animated, but at least I got a better view of its four wings. (What? I like wings.)

(I was going to do something on why dragon advertising nauseates me, but this works, too.)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Figure Collection.

A while back, I did a brief post about the Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Figure Collection series. They are, in short, little figures of Duel Monsters with Duel Terminal-compatible trading cards in little boxes. The figures apparently also have something on their bases that allows them to be scanned by a Duel Terminal. It's an ingenious idea that Konami really should have tried a long time ago.

As of late, these MFC's have been bugging me. That is putting it nicely.

First off, can anybody point to a good site for updates on this series? The last few have come almost completely out of the blue. The only reason I know about the most recent two sets is random eBay searches. Even the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia only talks about the first series, which featured the 5 Dragons from 5D's.

My second gripe - and I know you all are going to get very sick of hearing this - is that all of the monsters in the first three sets have had "dragon" in their names. You could argue about XYZ- Dragon Cannon and Cyber End Dragon being not dragons, but it is obvious that Konami is just milking their dragons for all that they are worth. Seriously, the series is called "Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Figure Collection," not "Yu-Gi-Oh! Dragon Figure Collection."

They could do so much more with this. Yu-Gi-Oh! is loaded with cool monsters besides dragons. I am sure that they could get away with adding Dark Magician, Dark Magician Girl (a million nerds just fapped at the thought), Magician of Black Chaos, Black Luster Soldier -Envoy of the Beginning (come on, you KNOW they will do CED), Elemental Hero Neos in at least one of his forms and Elemental Hero Flame Wingman; they may as well finish what they started with Horus by adding in Phoenix of Nephthys and The Creator; the Earthbound Immortals would be awesome to assemble, even if they were evil; hell, why not have Levia-Dragon and Behemoth the King of Animals in one set? Brain Crusher, an awesome-looking mantis-dragon that apparently eats brains, would be cool to see again period. The possibilities are endless and awesome. Konami is letting them slip by.

Today, I showed a friend of mine the Horus figure. He wanted to buy that item regardless of the card being in Japanese. Much like decks containing Mirror Force and Crush Card Virus, these figure boxes are hot items that Konami could easily make money off of around the world. Instead, not only are they limiting themselves to dragons, but they have chosen to keep their product in Japan.

Oh, wait. I can totally predict their reason for NOT bringing these awesome little things over here: 

"Butbutbutbut DUEL TERMINALS AREN'T WIDESPREAD ENOUGH YET!"

Whose fault is THAT? Bandai has had card terminals for years in Japan. To make up for the relative suck of GX (were they writing as they went along?), they could have introduced Duel Terminals earlier as opposed to when they were suffering. Stick one in every Target to give the kiddies something to do while their parents are buying stuff. Virtual card games are not a hard sell.

Great idea + poor execution = More Konami fail. Why am I not surprised? Randomness is amazing marketing, and these are neat no matter which one you get. There is no way to lose, yet Konami is hesitating.

(On a tangentially-related note, I AM secretly eager to get my mitts on some of the Ragnarok-themed cards coming out. I am all for the battle of mythologies that I have been looking forward to since DAY ONE of YGO.)

Raikou Tin + God Card Set Released!

Raikou likes me. It really likes me! Seriously, that Lugia piece and the promos just paid for the whole tin. Breaking even, if not profiting, is a real joy!

On another note, Konami released both the God Card + Blue-Eyes, Red-Eyes, and Dark Magician set and the Marik Structure Deck recently. If you're a fan of the old Yu-Gi-Oh! series, check those out. The Marik Deck has a much-awaited common Mirror Force (seriously, it's about damn time) and the God Card Master Collection has...three of the most popular monsters from the old series and God Cards.

I would actually recommend getting the God Cards now, even if you just want them as collector's pieces. That's what they are: Collectibles. Nothing else. They are three of the most solid investments in YGO. If it ever goes under, those cards will still be valuable. Right now, they are about ten times cheaper than I have seen them in the past. Even with this sudden reprint, they will mean a lot to fans of the original series.

Hopefully, the case will be the same for the reprints of Blue-Eyes, Red-Eyes and Dark Magician. There are still fans of those monsters, too.

The only thing really bad about these reprints is that Konami made no rarity changes. At all. The God Cards and the other three monsters have all been printed as Ultra Rares already. It would not have hurt to at least give them snazzy text to set them apart...but eh, the DB Blue-Eyes is still holding fairly steady. I'm not too worried; it was still an excellent move in their part.

Coming up: Pokemon Black and White: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Nintendo's increasing furry tendencies in Pokemon and the things that YGO fanfic writers do HORRIBLY wrong.

Also, holy crap did I fail that test at number conversions. At least the rest of the course looks like it's in fairly plain English. Gonna be nabbing a LOT of spare points next week!

Copyright Issues.

If you keep up with any sort of Pokemon news site, you are probably well-aware that Nintendo has officially requested that several sites (most notably Serebii.net and Pokebeach) stop posting official images from their games. They claim that this is copyright infringement.

While this is technically true, it took them, what...over a decade to start bitching about it? The hell?

This is not the first time that copyright holders and fans have butted heads. Every three seconds, an AMV is taken down from YT because companies cannot stand having their works promoted, FOR FREE, by people who might have actually PAID for said stuff. (That stat is an approximation, but you get the idea.)

More recently, OneManga and several other manga scanlation sites were sued by license holders. OK. I can understand that. That's still not cool.


(Plus, Viz lost one of my favorite properties. The English version of the above manga goes for, I kid you not, over 1,000 USD. Not having scanlations is like salt on a wound.)

What really surprised me, in this case, was that it was Nintendo doing it. Nintendo has always struck me as a very stable company that, at the very least, acted like they did not need our business. That's usually a good move; "if you want idiots (i.e. the lowest common denominator) to listen, wave money around."

Pokemon has a huge fanbase, an anime and a bunch of gullible little kids who will buy anything that Nintendo throws at them. Although the adult fanbase of Pokemon is substantial, my guess is that it is LARGELY sustained by little kids (although not as heavily as YGO is). Those are ALWAYS a fine source of money. ALWAYS. Pokemon is pretty safe as a franchise and is probably the LAST one they should worry about.


Look into Pikachu's eyes and tell me that Nintendo is in debt.

This sudden 'BAWWW' strikes me as a desperate and likely unnecessary move - are you really that deep into the financial pits, Nintendo? You have not complained until now. You have a sound franchise whose fanbase can only get bigger if the information about it is spread online. Essentially, you will lose money if you keep this up. Stop now.

At least they haven't nailed Bulbapedia, yet. Then I would have to get a weapon that actually worked.

9-26: Suicune Tin!

This officially makes up for making Suicune look like crap on the Legend cards, Nintendo. Seriously, I love you for temporarily whoring out something that is not a dragon or Lucario. Alas, I am also aware that this is short-lived; come Black/White, I am SURE that you will be pimping Reshiram, Zekrom and Zoroark in tins after the usual starter run. Ya rly. (I will, however, be getting my mitts on a Tsutarja/Jarorda tin ASAP.)

Got a LOT of pent-up dragonhumper angst to write about, but before I do that, I will add that the YGO tins are not as visually impressive this year. They come with some nice reprints, but I think Konami's losing their touch. Tins are really their forte; I smell a decline.