WillyFourEyes/Waltzoid's Journal

Playing a few hours of Palworld (yes, I bought it; I never said I wouldn't) and thinking about the patent lawsuit by The Pokémon Company over the act of tossing Poké Balls/Pal Spheres to summon a monster into combat also made me think about why such a custom has been a staple of Pokémon for the many decades the franchise has existed.

The obvious answer is because it looks fucking cool. When two Pokémon trainers gear up to battle one another, they need to do something to show anyone watching that they mean business. So they each toss their balls into the ring, release their monsters, and fight!

Well, that's how it's depicted in the anime, anyway.

In the 2D Pokémon games, you don't actually dramatically throw your Poké Ball into the arena to summon your Pokémon. Your trainer's sprite slides off to the side while an animation of a Poké Ball pops into view, followed by the Pokémon itself. In Pokémon Legends Z-A where you can run around Lumiose City and summon your Pokémon at any time, that's all there is to it - you open your ball and toss it to the side to release your Pokémon. It's less exciting, sure, but it's a few seconds faster and less prone to misfires or dropped balls (in the anime and I think in the 3D games, the Poké Ball opens in mid-air to release the Pokémon).

I assumed the absence of this summoning animation in the full release version of Palworld was related to the lawsuit, since you only need to press a button to release your Pals, causing them to appear right next to you in a fraction of a second. But then you still need to toss Pal Spheres at weakened Pals to capture them, so the Spheres' functional similarity to the Poké Balls themselves couldn't have been the issue. (Not that it matters, since Palworld has been selling like hotcakes on PC and the non-Nintendo consoles since last month, no doubt boosted by disgruntled Pokémon fans hoping to stick it to the Nintendo/TPC/Game Freak triumvirate as much as appreciating its weird amalgam of other genres.) I think the "throw ball to capture creature" function makes more sense than the "throw ball to release creature" since you have to throw the ball just right so that the part with the switch opens to allow you to catch your target.

I've officially become one of "those" Fire Emblem fans.

You know...someone who compulsively checks official and unofficial Nintendo-related channels for any new information related to Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave ever since its reappearance in the June 2026 Nintendo Direct.

There's been a slow but steady drip-feed of information on the cast of the game - Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays on the Japanese Fire Emblem Twitter/X account (link to a Twitter mirror site because the real thing won't let you view any posts without an obnoxious "Log in or sign up to read this post" banner getting in the way), and daily English updates on the Nintendo Today app. A profile here, a 30-second-or-less combat clip there, but not too much that gives the whole game away.

Splatoon Raiders releases later this week, so most of the app's ad space has been devoted to hyping that up. This leaves late August and early September for Fortune's Weave to get its moment in the sun.

Whatever comes my way, I'm here for it. Based on previews alone, my tastes are gravitating toward the nerdy sidekicks Tialla/Tiara and Bonaventure/Bonaparte. And Esmeralda.

I made it back to TooManyGames this year. Not having to fly solo this time around made the return trip easier and more fun.

As usual, I focused on bolstering my retro video game collection. Just as modern gaming is unfortunately getting more expensive, with console and computer component prices shooting through the roof thanks to RAM sticks and chips becoming scarce for anything not built for (corpo buzzword) "AI", I feel like prices on older games are also getting bonkers. Not-complete-in-box NES cartridges selling for triple digits? Please. I feel like I got lucky finding Destiny of an Emperor, Capcom's Romance of the Three Kingdoms RPG, for $50. I also picked up 8 Eyes (a Castlevania clone where you play as a swordsman who's also a falconer, and there's a logic puzzle at the end), Air Fortress, Skate or Die 2: The Search for Double Trouble (not all that good, but the copy I bought last year didn't work), and Ultima: Quest for the Avatar (a decent rendition of the classic PC RPG; I liked it a lot better than FCI's adaptations of Ultima III: Exodus and Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny), Super Mario Maker 2 (essentially trading in a PAL copy for an NTSC copy, even though I didn't need to because the Nintendo Switch isn't region-locked), Illusion of Gaia, Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure, and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse (leaving only Kirby Air Ride as the only Kirby game I haven't at least looked at).

Oh, and I also got to take a selfie with Kyle Hebert (Gohan from Dragon Ball, Aizen from Bleach, Kiba from Naruto, Ryu from Street Fighter, and a bunch of other notable roles), the third voice actor I've met at that convention in consecutive years (Colleen O'Shaughnessy in 2024, and Michelle Ruff in 2025). I don't get very nervous talking to people more famous than myself, but I do get somewhat self-conscious when I look at pictures of myself afterward. I feel that I have a "weird" smile that doesn't look like my jaw is aligned with the rest of my face.

This weekend sure had a lot of game trailer showcases...some (not I) would say too many, as the demise of E3 has left the pre-summer period wide open for publishers, developers, and game platform holders to fill the void with announcements of reasons to play games on that expensive rig you bought months before prices went all out of whack.

Let's see...there's the State of Play, the Xbox Games Showcase, the PC Games Show, the Future Games Show, today's Nintendo Direct, and many others that I can't name or have time to watch, all within a four-day span. That's a lot of video about video games to take in. This is why I think it's funny that there are so many of these damn things that Steam lumped the PC-centric ones into a "Summer Showcase of Summer Showcases".

I only directly watched the PlayStation and Nintendo shows because I have a PS5 and Switch 2, but not an Xbox Series system (too rich for my blood, and my gaming loft can't fit any more consoles). The State of Play book-ended its show with presentations for Insomniac's Wolverine game and the newest God of War game. I'm admittedly more interested in the former than the latter because Marvel Rivals is still fresh in my mind when it comes to good games with Wolverine in them, and I haven't played God of War: Ragnarök yet.

On the Nintendo side, there weren't any big blowout announcements of that caliber, but the show ended with a 30-second teaser for the long-rumored HD remake of Ocarina of Time, based on one of the best Legend of Zelda games ever made, and one of the best video games, period. In more immediate release news, I have my eyes on Rhythm Heaven Groove (early July), Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave (mid-September), and Nintendo Switch Sports Resort (late October).

There are more additions to my wishlist that I'd like to talk about in more detail, but the ones I just mentioned are set to release exclusively for the platforms that I own, which is why I'm highlighting them now.

I think this is the first video game console generation I've ever experienced where the hardware has increased in price across the board since launch. The PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, and now the Nintendo Switch 2 have all gone up due to economic factors too complex for me to explain or fully comprehend.

My usual game plan is to wait several months for a console to get good games or drop in price before dropping money on it. That isn't feasible this time around since the median prices of almost everything have risen in the past year, so I gave in to FOMO and bought my Switch 2 a few months after launch day, but several months before prices spiked. I'm sure I'll have a rough time holding those Joy-Con 2's when I have several fingers pointed at myself for contributing to this whole mess.

( My traditional 'serious' April Fools' Day post )

The upcoming Witch Hat Atelier animated adaptation just got a new trailer and a release date: April 6. Needless to say, I'm excited.

I know this was supposed to start airing last year, but I'm still hopeful that this will do the series justice. It's well animated, which is a good thing because the manga is famous for its intricate artwork. (You should read it if you have the chance. It's very good.)

Damn it...why did Starsand Island's Early Access phase have to drop just two weeks before the last major Fields of Mistria update before its full launch (which I hope will land before this Christmas)? This looks as much "my jam" as Mistria does...and the Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar HD remake...and Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma...and I just noticed I have a damn lot of farming games in my collection. Maybe I should play more of those before adding another one, and maybe wait to see what features it will add. (sigh)

Challenge #12

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

I'm not a moodboard person (God knows I'm well past the point where I should cultivate my digital art talents for more than just cropping official artwork for avatars), so in place of images, I'd like to give a collective shout-out to several friends in a Discord group I've visited almost every day for the past five years (including sarajayechan, meltherandom, cye_of_the_torrent, and others whose DW journals I don't know exist). Without them, I'd...sadly not have anyone else to talk to regularly, since most other social networks make it so easy for messages to get lost in the noise.

I mean, there are other places I could go to talk nonsense about fandoms like Fire Emblem, Pokemon, Ninja Turtles, RWBY, but the direct access and camaraderie are what I stick around for. And you're all willing to tolerate my occasional "I am very smart" attempts at deep analysis and my occasional "I am very angry" rants without turning on the sprinklers.

So, uh...yeah. Thanks for all that.

Last year, I swept the Internet looking for the most popular fanfics in the wider Fire Emblem fandom, including all of its sub-series. It was a long and exhausting process, and I think I should have started by narrowing my search to just the two major fic archives at Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own. Fire Emblem: Three Houses fic fandom is overwhelmingly tilted toward the AO3 side of things, as I found over 37,000 stories there (across all languages) compared to the almost 1,800 on Fanfiction.net when filtering to only show fics set in "Fódlan".

I conducted my experiment to move beyond raw numbers and look at what stories fans were actually discussing outside of those two websites. Unsurprisingly, when I did just look at which fics appeared on the first pages of rankings in popularity metrics (likes, comments, favorites, and bookmarks), the results mostly matched my discoveries from my earlier, wider search.

The Emperor and the Goddess (which I don't have an opinion on because I haven't read enough of it), Savior King (which I've said many negative things about and seems to be very divisive among the general fandom), and An Eagle Among Lions (which I have read and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it despite its schlocky premise) are something of a "Big Three" on the Archive. Technically, it's more of a "Big Four" - even though Tea Is for Teacher didn't make my general list in 2025 because it didn't get as many outside recommendations as Emperor, Eagle, or SK, it was still popular enough to be in the top 20 of all of AO3's key metrics.

On Fanfiction.net, finding the "hottest" fics was harder because so few of the stories in the top 25 are complete or still updating as of last year. The only ones I found on there that have received any kind of buzz are Those Who Can't, Teach (which is posting all future updates on AO3) and Stolen Remedy. Has anyone said anything about Idiosyncrasy? Or One More Ending? Or Fodlan's Fell Dragon? Please let me know if you have and if you think any of them are worth reading.