Upgrade Paths

I need to ponder some upgrades that I've been wanting to make. But first, some Things™:

Upgrades are sometimes frightening. Things can go wrong, sometimes in ways you fail to predict. It's easy to say, "Why fix what isn't broken," even if the new thing is vastly superior to the current thing, because of how easy it is to be intimidated by change. We're all wired that way, or so I've read.

So it is as I spend many a night glancing at the CompTIA A+ Certification study book on my shelf, which often sits there instead of getting read. I want to prepare for the exam, honest; but too often I tell myself that I'll just be wasting my time (and someone's money - a couple of people have offered to pay the exam fee if I just set up a test date, but ...). I haven't even set up a test date; that would require me to admit that I am going to take the test and I am going to study for a deadline, propelling myself toward big, scary change. The intent, after all, is to use certification to help me get a job somewhere doing tech support (for example, at Best Buy's Geek Squad), and once I am certified, the pressure will be on from friends and relatives to put in job applications and eventually respond to them. Maybe even get hired? after which I'd likely have to put in my two weeks' at Wendy's and say goodbye to (most of) the crew. After ten months of working there, the job feels like my safety net; I don't want it to disappear.

But I have to move on at some point. I have no intent or interest in pursuing a managerial position at Wendy's, and the routine I work gets dull, repetitive. I don't use any skills I feel good at, and there are many days where I return home feeling stressed. It just drains me on most days, and I have to struggle to find time (especially when trying to get together with friends, thanks to our varying schedules) to do things that recharge myself. That part's not as bad as it could be, but still.

Money is an issue, too. I've been struggling on that front for a while, barely scraping by with my funds in the black. If the owner of the property I live in were to pass away any time soon, I would be unable to handle all of the mandatory bills they've been managing, even if I cut back virtually every nonessential (much as I loathe to say it: yes, that would include Internet service for the house). In other words, I have to increase my income rate soon, or else give up any semblance of having a "lifestyle", which would be reduced to "barely existing". The clock's ticking, and I have no idea when it will run out.

So, yeah. That's where I am.



Let's lighten it up a bit. Want to help me make a decision on some computer upgrades?

So I have three machines that I want to make changes to. One is a laptop; two are desktops. The newer, more powerful desktop is named "saanaito", and is basically a donation from a friend who was getting rid of it anyway. The older desktop, "tsubotsubo", has been mine since 2009. The laptop is "eefi", a ThinkPad I bought used on eBay in 2015. You can view detailed specifications here, but below is a quick rundown of the important details so you can get a rough idea of the machines' capabilities:

saanaito:

• Core i3 (Sandy Bridge)
• 8 GB of RAM
• integrated graphics
• 128 GB SSD (OS) + 1 TB HDD (games and stuff) + two external HDDs
• Debian testing

tsubotsubo:

• Core 2 Duo
• 4 GB of RAM
• old Nvidia GPU (GeForce 9500 GS)
• 250 GB HDD (OS) + 500 GB HDD (games)
• Windows 10 Pro

eefi:

• Core i5 (Westmere)
• 4 GB of RAM
• integrated graphics
• 120 GB SSD + 64 GB microSD (extra storage) + 250 GB HDD (not installed)
• Debian testing (SSD)/ Windows 10 Pro (HDD)

So. The plan and goals.

I'm trying to make it easier to play my game library, mainly. Some games I have are Windows-only, and I can only get so many of them to behave in Wine. There is at least one game (Tangledeep) that completely refuses to run on my laptop in Linux (in this case, due to Unity requiring a minimum of OpenGL 3.0 support, and eefi only supporting 2.1) despite having Linux support; yet it works perfectly on the same hardware in Windows (due to DirectX needs being met and utilized).

I'm also trying to learn to use Windows 10. Until around September, I didn't have a usable license to any Windows release beyond Vista; now I have legal licenses to 10 on tsubotsubo and eefi (eefi's being an OEM-descended license - it took the Win7 product key from eefi's sticker!), and I intend to make myself use them so that I can help people who come to me with Windows questions. Windows 10 has been out for a couple of years now, and many people have either upgraded their systems to it, or bought new systems with 10 preinstalled. I can't sit on my knowledge of Vista/7 forever, if I'm going to get into tech support for a living (and considering Linux's market share, that will only ever truly be practical if I become a sysadmin somewhere; otherwise it's all been me learning about it for fun, for myself).

The trouble is as follows: my 10 installs are on inferior hardware. tsubotsubo's installation would benefit greatly from being migrated to an SSD and being moved to saanaito. eefi's installation just needs an SSD and an extra disk bay to sit in (or to move the Debian SSD into). I am ... cautiously optimistic that I might receive an SSD for Christmas this year. One.

As for my Debian installations, I am contemplating keeping them on their existing SSDs as a secondary OS; I would boot to them with the BIOS disk picker. Windows needs to be the primary disk because 10 likes to wake up the computer on its own to check for updates/do auto reboots, and I'd rather it be able to get back into 10 automatically if I'm away/asleep. But I don't want to get rid of Linux as a host OS, nor do I want to dual boot off one disk (I tried that before, but partitioning headaches are not fun). I'm actually contemplating switching to Ubuntu LTS as a host Linux OS; if I do so, I'd probably run XFCE (so Xubuntu) and mostly run Steam with those installs, while migrating (most of) my Debian installation to a VM ...

... or just to tsubotsubo. Between the desktops, I could set up saanaito as a gaming-focused machine - especially if I can give it a dedicated graphics card - and tsubotsubo as a server, attached to the household router via Ethernet, and with the external HDDs attached to it. This possibility is important for me to consider, because I've based a few of my other devices' setups around the idea that saanaito, when up, is always accessible via ssh and sftp, with the 4 TB HDD permanently mounted thanks to my edited /etc/fstab. Said HDD is already formatted as ext4; it's full and I have nowhere to move the data to to reformat it in a Windows-friendly filesystem; and I'm not taking chances with beta-quality drivers/programs for Windows that would grant it ext2/3/4 R/W access but has a heightened risk of corrupting the entire partition. Therefore I must have Linux running somewhere in order to access the data, which is basically my entire media (books/movies/music/games) collection, assorted backups of Android devices, and such.

I'm sure I've left something out (EDIT: like the option of donating tsubotsubo's hardware to a friend who could use it for - you guessed it - gaming, after I've moved everything to saanaito). If you feel a headache coming on, that's probably normal.

All of these options won't work out very well unless I replace at least one Windows disk with an SSD and transfer Windows to it. I'd like to have two SSDs in saanaito (one per OS; plus an HDD for games), one in tsubotsubo (plus the external HDDs), and two in eefi (one per OS again, plus a big SD card for game storage; one of the disks would have to go in the UltraBase dock, and for that I need a HDD sled). But I can't really count on getting any, so let's just say that maybe I'll end up with a little Christmas money after the holidays are over and I'll spend it on a 240 GB SSD.

Which machine would be better to put it in? Which OS? Should I hold off until I get another SSD? (And maybe a GPU for saanaito?) I know it's mostly a "it all depends on your use case and setup", but I did just try to describe it above ... If you have any suggestions, or even just questions for me to think about, I'm sure they would help.

And maybe, when I stop obsessing over assembling a better gaming machine, I'll pull the A+ book back out and get to work on my life upgrades.

Frustrated with the world

I spent a lot of time following the news on the events in Charlottesville, and things connected to it, and it sucks. White supremacists/Nazis are bad and I want them gone as much as anyone else. (Plus there's the tensions between this country and North Korea. Eeek.)

Right now I feel exhausted with it and I want to withdraw from the world for a while. Play video games and not have a care about the world, like I could do when I was very young.

I can't really enjoy myself, though. When I finally get some downtime, all I do is poke around on the Internet some more. Read more on peoples' reactions to all that's happened.

Also, a relative is being passive aggressive with me trying to get me to do self-improvement things. Even as I type this she's doing it, in the next room. Just makes me feel worse, and does nothing to help me want to do it.

Sorry. I know a lot of what I wrote up there is selfish. It's just a fraction of what's on my mind anyway. I'm not sure who to talk to about it.

My ideal mobile phone

It doesn't happen often, but once in a while, I'll get into a discussion with someone else about things about our phones that suck, and what we'd look for in our next one. On a whim (and noticing I haven't written much lately), I figured I'd just list all the specs/features I'd want for my next phone, and why; hopefully this sparks some discussion!

I'd like to start, however, with what I already have: two Motorola phones. My daily driver is a Droid Turbo, and my previous DD was a Droid RAZR M, which I still have. (I have a handful other older and budget phones, but those were never DDs, so I'm ignoring them for now.) Respectively released at the end of 2014 and 2012, the Turbo is still going pretty strong and recently got an upgrade to Android 6.0.1; the RAZR M's final official OS is Android 4.4.2, and while I ran custom ROMs on it for a while (mainly CyanogenMod 12), I ultimately dropped back to the official 4.4.2 (with a patched kernel to address an audio bug) for stability's sake. Nonetheless, the RAZR M is showing its age, as the Google apps and services grow ever larger; free RAM is obviously scarce, and the older NAND flash just can't keep up with things like it was once expected to with a similar app loadout. But I still use the phone almost daily, for one reason: playing music. The RAZR M has a microSD slot, while the Turbo does not; consequently, I've loaded most of a card with music and have pushed almost all other duties exclusively to the Turbo.

Oh. My crystal ball tells me that you're thinking "too long, not reading". All right, fine, I'll move along.

So! My ideal phone.

• Compared to the Turbo, I think shrinking the height and width slightly, while increasing thickness a tad, would allow for more effective one-handed operation (at least for my hands, obviously) while still potentially allowing for a 3500+ mAh battery.
• A 720x1280 or 1080x1920 screen would be my ideal resolution. Anything greater than 1080p is just extra pixels that I'm not going to discern (there's barely any video content over 1080p and I'm not going to run games at their max graphical settings because that chugs battery power!) - plus it increases power consumption for little gain in daily use - and lower than 720p starts to enter "you can see the pixels without trying" territory - not that I mind seeing pixels, but it can be very distracting with various colors if the display is PenTile (see: the RAZR M) and makes small text harder to read. I'm not sure if I'd have the display tech be good ol' LCD, or OLED. OLED displays may have prettier colors and true blacks, but they degrade noticeably early on.
• I'm torn between physical (or "physical") buttons over on-screen buttons - especially if the display would be OLED, since on-screen is just an extra spot for the burn-in effect to be noticed. I like the "physical" buttons on my Turbo overall, but it drives me a little nuts that they're forever stuck with the KitKat design and can't support adapting to context. On the other hand, they never vanish for Immersive Mode.
• Direct OS support from Google, a la Nexus/Pixel. I'm sick to tears of the official firmware being years behind on my Verizon Moto phones, and Moto was pretty good about updates for a while! (I hate that I never got to use a Moto X or G before the company was absorbed by Lenovo.) I'd also like to see official support last for around five years - this is the one trait of Apple's devices that I envy iPhone users for (timely updates AND long-lasting OS support - at least, long by smartphone standards).
• Android 7.0 or newer as the starting OS. A clean build with zero bloatware or carrier apps. Pure Google plus AOSP plus the necessary firmware/drivers.
• A 3.5 mm analog headphone jack. No sale otherwise.
• I know USB C is the future, but I kind of want to hang on to microUSB for just a little longer. I still have absolutely nothing that uses USB C, or even USB 3.0 (save for a couple of flash drives whose full potential I cannot use)! Plus I'd have to get an adapter for my dual-mode flash drives, and new OTG adapters, and ... ugh, I'll switch once USB C has proliferated a lot more, okay?
• A microSD slot. I know it's a performance bottleneck, but I want to use one, mounted as a separate volume (i.e., as opposed to the new mode introduced in Android 6), filled with all of my music, some movies, and other content that's almost exclusively read, sequentially. The United States' mobile broadband has a long way to go before I'll even consider streaming as my primary means of consuming content. I will keep software on the internal storage, though - and with the increasing size of both the Google apps and many games, I think I'd want 64 GB as the minimum for internal NAND. Even 32 GB is just too cramped for me now.
• Speaking of broadband, I'd really like full compatibility with all US carriers (and many carriers in other countries). Also, a pony, as long as I'm wishing. The current standard for LTE seems good enough that (on Verizon at least) I can make VoLTE calls almost anywhere I'd want to go.
• 801.11 n/ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1 or newer, though I imagine this hardly merits mentioning. Throw in NFC even though I never use it.
• A freely-unlockable bootloader, or an official service that makes it fairly easy to unlock. (I guess it goes without saying that it won't be sold through Verizon.) This plus direct OS support would likely make custom ROMs well-supported by homebrew devs/enthusiasts.
• A low-energy chip that helps the phone always listen for hotwords, screen on or not, without doing more than barely sipping battery power. The Moto X had this; and I've had the equivalent feature enabled for a while on my Droid Turbo, which I believe has no such chip, and I love it. I can bark commands at my phone while it's charging before bed, which is super handy when I'm asked to remember (to get) something for tomorrow. (My memory sucks.) 
• An easily-removable battery - and I'd be okay with making the phone a little chunky to accommodate a biggish one (say, 3000 mAh or a bit more). I think one of the biggest problems with smartphone batteries in general right now is that they're all different - if phone manufacturers and battery makers could collaborate in the name of improving the customer experience, I bet they could come up with "universal gumstick"-shaped rechargeables and multiple phones that would accept these, in a manner not unlike what we have/had for devices that accept AA and AAA alkaline batteries and their rechargeable replacements. (I imagine doing this could, potentially, improve overall quality control and reduce costs for manufacturers and customers, since there wouldn't be so damn many battery models to juggle!) All of this would make it possible to make removable batteries much more practical for all parties, since customers would stand a chance of finding replacement batteries for their device in good condition without resorting to sketchy "el cheapo" third party equivalents, which often become the only option for older phones as parts stop being made by the OEMs. Phones could therefore be made to last longer, especially since the year-to-year power increase has flattened for now and makes buying a new phone every year or two hardly worthwhile beyond having a fresh battery inside.
• ... man, I went off on a tangent there, didn't I. Oh well. Probably a pipe dream anyway, considering how much phones and many standard PCs are clearly designed to be disposable these days ...
• Specs! To start, I'd really like to see 4 GB of RAM, maybe even 6. It's a lot for a phone now, but give it a few years. Devs are going to keep targeting "MOAR POWER", just as devs for the PC market did and do. And in the meantime, it'd let me shuffle through multiple programs ("multitask") like a champ.
• A recent SoC, but not the latest-and-greatest. ARM CPUs and GPUs for phones seem to have gotten to the point where they're plenty fast even if you want to push some serious computing and/or gaming. The problem is that they all get too hot too fast to do that at top speed for any meaningful length of time, and thus the quest for more speed is wasted. Instead, I'd want a SoC that's about a year old for the phone's time (say, the Snapdragon 820), but tweaked and revised to consume less battery power and stay cooler at the higher clock speeds - plus, put some heat pipes in the phone to dissipate the heat even further. Avoid thermal throttling for as long as possible - that's what I'd love to have seen with even an older SoC, like the Snapdragon 805 in my Turbo. SO MUCH potential is lost because we (or SoC makers, at least) are too damn busy chasing faster theoretical performance instead of trying to squeeze out more speed - and better efficiency - in real-world usage.
• A really good rear camera. (I'm not picky about the front camera other than that (a) there is one and (b) it's good enough for video calls.) I'm real fuzzy on technical specs for these, but I heard the Nexus 6P's camera was pretty good, so something like that I guess? Optical Image Stabilization would be very appreciated, and I wouldn't mind a camera bump if it meant good focal range, focus accuracy, and a high quality sensor. (12 MP would easily be fine, 15+ seems insane to me unless you're using a DSLR.) RAW support in the stock photo app would be nice, too; I like the camera app on my Turbo for the most part, just wish it gave me more manual controls. Also, I wonder if anyone is working on cramming in an optical zoom ...?
• I really don't like how my Turbo's SIM tray is behind the volume buttons; IMO it makes them feel flimsier, plus I can't press both volume buttons simultaneously which limits what combinations you can do. I think the SIM+microSD tray that a lot of phones use nowadays is pretty cool. You know, the one with the pinhole that has a button inside? Seems better overall; at least it's less stressful than the push-push spring-loaded slots in my RAZR M. One slip of the finger and my SIM or microSD would go flying out of that.
• Whatever microphone setup my Turbo is using, I'd want to replicate that. Voice recordings with a good recording program (I like Sony's) at lossless quality sound superb.
• GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, lux, all the usual sensors.

I think that about covers it. If I forgot something, let me know and I'll add it in. If you made it this far (and didn't rapidly scroll down from the top to get here), thanks for sticking with me. Which details do you agree with? Which would you change? Sound off in the comments!

Nintendo Switch thoughts!

Man, the reveal of the NX - hereafter, the Nintendo Switch - was incredible. My mind is already racing with all the fun possibilities and I really hope that we get some more details soon!

But I have several thoughts I'd like to go ahead and write out. First, though: if you haven't watched the First Look video, do so now!

Done? Good.

Sooooo I'm hoping that the base will have a number of features that the tablets cannot, such as an optical drive (for backwards compatibility with Wii U software) and an included HDD (not just flash storage this time, please, Nintendo!), while keeping a respectable amount of flash storage on the tablet to hold a few downloaded titles (in addition to the cartridge, of course). Hopefully save files are always kept on the tablet, and/or automatically synced over the Internet.

I'm also hoping that there will be some sort of "starter box set" that includes the Switch as shown in the First Look, and standalone tablets (with a controller set) to accommodate additional family members. It'd also be great if the dock would allow any docked Switch tablet to use the software in the dock; maybe we could even "rent" downloadable titles from the dock?

I also really hope, if the Switch is designed to replace the Wii U and the 3DS family, that Nintendo makes a "mini" version of the tablet with the button controls built in (e.g., non-removable), so that we still have a pocketable portable system. If not, I guess we'll have to start hauling around our Switches in a tablet sleeve or book-sized carrying case once the 3DS family is phased out.

Speaking of which, I hope the battery life on the tablet is better than the 3DS family's - the OG 3DS in particular is painfully short in practice, even if you don't game that much. With my DS Lite, I can play in small bites and potentially not have to recharge the thing for over a week. (I wonder if the plane ride in the First Look is subtly addressing that question.)

I hope they keep - or even expand - the StreetPass and SpotPass features, too.

With all that said - I'm excited for this thing. I feel like my favorite feature (besides the natural benefits that come from the home and portable console being the same machine) is the fact that each "half" of the controller can be handed to a player for some simple, yet fun two-player (or even four, it seems) action! I'll be looking forward to having impromptu Mario Kart and Smash matches.

Have any of you thought of other wants/hopes for the Switch? By all means drop a comment below!

Short Thoughts on Fire Emblem: Awakening vs. Fates and emotional manipulation

I listened to some music from the soundtracks of Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem: Fates a little while ago, and it occurred to me that while I look back (not that far, admittedly) on Awakening very fondly, I tend to feel a bit ... bitter when I think about Fates. The sentiment that usually comes to mind is based around a comment I saw on a gaming website: "'Fire Emblem: Pay For the Canon Ending'".

This got me thinking. For all the improvements we saw in Fates' gameplay features over Awakening, like the revised (read: less broken) Pair Up system and the multiplayer-friendly features like My Castle and actual PvP combat, the story (and some gimmicks related to it) feels like a step backwards.

Awakening, in my opinion, for the most part has a very generic-feeling story, but makes up for it with great characters (which the Support conversation scenes flesh out well) and decent pacing overall, save for the lull in the middle of the game. Meanwhile, Fates, in my opinion, tries too hard to make you feel for the characters, to get you invested in them and their struggle regardless of how naturally inclined you might be to do so.

I would go so far as to say that Fire Emblem: Fates is deliberately emotionally manipulative.

I mean, yeah, a lot of stories are to some degree, depending on your point of view. I don't think it's uncommon for a writer to stick in some sad lines or disastrous events to kick in the reader's empathy. But Fates hits the player hard and fast - most people will get to Chapter 5 within an hour or two, and we're treated to a fully-animated cutscene where a character very close to the protagonist - the player's Avatar - is killed by a sudden and brutal attack, courtesy of the Avatar's surrogate father, and the Avatar is filled with so much grief and rage that they transform into a dragon, right before kicking off Chapter 5's battle.

Awakening waits until Chapter 9 to pull its big death stunt (barring the opening cutscene, which carries different connotations because of the circumstances), which (as I remember) takes around 6-9 hours to arrive at, depending on difficulty. It gives you a lot more time to get emotionally invested in the characters and their plights. Plus, not every emotional moment is directly related to you, as the Avatar; the Avatar's role is more of a deuteragonist in this game (though it does shift a lot in the third act).

In contrast, every big scene in Fates is supposed to be tied to you (the Avatar) somehow. Your family from the house you sided against brand you a traitor. Your father of Nohr turned evil. Your mother dies. Your eldest siblings face you off near the climax.

On top of this, while Awakening gives what many consider to be a very satisfying ending, Fates leaves the player hanging if they play Birthright or Conquest.

All of this leads me to believe that Fates was written specifically to manipulate the player into feeling invested in the characters, so as to want a better resolution and pay for the other story paths. Indeed, the aforementioned "canon ending", Revelation, cannot be played through without also buying Birthright and/or Conquest. You must spend $60 to $80 instead of the baseline $40, to get either a downloadable copy of Revelation's data or a physical cartridge with all three paths.

I don't know why Intelligent Systems went with this pricing path. Maybe they thought it was honestly clever. Maybe they knew they needed a way to give newcomers and old hands appropriate ways to enjoy the same world and wrote Revelation because they couldn't fit the necessary plot threads into the separate versions. I don't know. But what it feels like is that they tried out a different scheme to make some extra money that turned out to be just a little too transparent, and I'm less inclined to buy the next Fire Emblem as a result.

Reasons I Love Pokémon Black and White

[It's been a while since my last post, hasn't it ... ?

This is just a small list I wrote about a year ago; I kept it tucked away in my Google Drive and never posted it anywhere. Today, while reorganizing my Drive, I stumbled upon it, and decided it might be fun to share.]

Beware of unmarked spoilers. [EDIT: December 12, 2015: Now with some TV Tropes links.]

• This is the only game (pair) in the franchise where your motivation for challenging the Elite Four is, at any point, not the comparatively self-centered goal of becoming the Champion for glory or ranking. Instead, you challenge them because it's the only option you have to reach and confront N, who at this point has issued a challenge where failure to win - and presumably, refusing to meet the challenge - means separation of Pokémon and humans the world over.
• Related to the above:
• The climax of the game's "Team X" storyline doesn't end before the 7th or 8th Gym badge, as it did in pretty much every other generation - instead, it's the final bosses, just after the Elite Four. This time, prior to the 8th badge is when the player learns of N's ultimate intention, and suddenly the heat is on to chase him to the Pokémon League, making the pursuit of the 8th badge much more purposeful.
• The game's experience system - which is only used in this generation - makes it harder to overlevel a team without seriously going out of one's way to level grind. As a result, many players arrive at the Elite Four with a team roughly equal in levels to the opponents'. This, I think, makes the final bosses much more exciting and challenging, with an increased reliance on good tactics even for veterans. (That Hydregion though.)
• The flow of events after defeating the Elite Four and marching forth to face N has a more-traditional JRPG feel, in my opinion. There's a lot of buildup, and it meets expectations instead of being an underwhelming letdown that's resolved in five minutes.
• Just after the "Pokémon League Under Siege" cutscene comes one of my favorite tracks in the game, "Carrying Out A Mission". It's right up there with "For the Savior" from Lufia 2 as far as heroic "we gotta do this" songs go - but unless you stand around for a bit, you only hear the first ten seconds, and it never plays again.
• The final boss feels like a final boss; that's not to say the Champions were never climactic or challenging or anything, but see my first bullet point - it was all friendly competition, and there was no danger or menace in those fights (with the possible slight exception of your Rival in Gen 1). This time, you're fighting a madman, and as far as you can tell, he's angry enough to kill you (he doesn't exactly try, but still).
• The ending cutscene is somewhat emotionally charged and has a beautiful track to go with it. You don't get the usual Hall of Fame bit, which may leave veterans feeling like they have unfinished business ...
• The game sets up a good ol' Checkov's Plot Trinket, which isn't made terribly obvious unless you play both versions of the game. I'm pretty sure this is the first time in the series that such a thing is done so early in the story, and without a huge neon sign that says "SUPER IMPORTANT THING HERE".
• Bianca, Cheren, Bianca's father, and N all get noticeable character development. This is well below (above? it's a negative thing after all, and in golf you score low ...) par for the course for most stories in general, but for a Pokémon game it's pretty nice, and it's done fairly well. Two of the related cutscenes even get pretty emotional pieces (and there are even more for N, delivered as flashbacks, in B2W2).
• The whole plot related to Team Plasma's purported goal legitimately calls into question the "slave or friend" debate on Pokémon, something that has been on the minds of many fans and Moral Guardians since the series' debut. It's not often that a kid-friendly game examines itself in this manner, and it provides plenty of food for thought. (N's possible backstory does too, though more in the form of Fridge Horror.)
• Despite the first bullet point, you can return to the Pokémon League after the credits and rematch the Elite Four - then properly challenge the Champion. He doesn't quite get the awesome battle theme other Champions have, but he makes up for it by having a pretty tough team at high levels (though keep in mind that, in story, N stomped this team flat), hot on the heels of Red's team. It takes a lot of level grinding to stand a chance if you didn't import a battle-hardened team from Gen 4, so it's a pretty meaningful battle for a lot of players.

What do you like about the Gen 5 games? Please tell me in the comments!