Article Incredible Pokemon Reinterpretations
In this week's InterNerd, we explore several different artists' reinterpretations of existing Pokemon – imagining them as real beings, nightmare monsters, actual humans, and more.
Realistic Pokemon
DeviantArt-ist Arvalis has put together a pretty sizable collection of incredibly realistic Pokemon designs – with a trainer silhouette in each to show the sheer scale of these 'mons. But one of the coolest parts of these designs is how other Pokemon are subtly worked into many of them (notice the Caterpie in the Charizard one below).
Article The Dorklyst: The 10 Weirdest Evolutions in Pokémon
The entire concept of having animals evolve into insanely-powerful beast monsters by beating the crap out of others in battle (or by being exposed to stones, being traded, etc.) is pretty ridiculous in and of itself. But it's not too difficult suspending your disbelief when the end result is a fire-breathing dragon who remains loyal to you (despite the fact you're forcing it to fight a bird who shoots lightning). But there are some specific evolutions that are extremely weird, even in the already-weird field of Pokemon evolutions. These are the 10 weirdest evolutions in Pokemon.
10. Cubone into Marowak
Cubone's life kinda sucks – he's so upset at the death of his mother (remember, this is an entire species of Pokemon, meaning they all are bereaved over the deaths of each of their individual mothers), that he literally wears her skull, which may not be the most emotionally-healthy coping tactic. Then again, in some deeply, deeply messed up way, his mother is still protecting poor little Cubone – since her skull now acts as his helmet. It's definitely indicative of some kind of creepy Norman Bates/Mother relationship, but it's mostly harmless.
Where it gets weird is when Cubone evolves into Marowak. Essentially, Marowak's just a bigger Cubone, which isn't all that weird. What is weird is that Marowak is defined by having gotten over the death of its mother (remember: AS A SPECIES, Marowaks have ALL gotten over the deaths of their individual mothers), but still wears a skull on its head. But it's specifically NOT its mother's! Meaning…Marowak found some random dead Pokemon's bigger skull and is wearing that now? Something tells me Marowak hasn't quite reached the closure it claims to have.
Article 7 Terms From Star Wars That Don't Mean What You Think They Mean
Despite all the humans, English language, and proper British accents, it's important to remember that the Star Wars universe isn't our own. Things are different there – they have landspeeders, they order around protocol droids, and their language – although sounding similar – has words that we think we know, but really have no clue. These are 7 terms from Star Wars that don't mean what you think they mean.
7. "Sith" is a species.
The Sith are the bad-guy Force people. Everyone knows that! They're the anti-Jedi, lightning shooting, Darth-named weirdos who refuse to use anything other than red in their lightsabers. Except…well, they didn't start off as "the group of Dark Side Force-guys." They started off as a species unto themselves.
Basically, they were red-skinned humanoids with gross face-tentacles from the planet Korriban. They had a predisposition towards the Dark Side of the Force, but that wasn't what defined them. That happened once a group of human Dark Jedi happened upon the species and interbred with them for a couple thousand years. Eventually, the Sith species was pretty much bred out of existence, and Sith became synonymous with the evil, cloak-wearing dudes we know them as today.
Although, it probably would've been smart to try using any lightsaber color other than red if they wanted to not give away their allegiances immediately.
Article The Dorklyst: The 8 Worst Videogame Raps in Marketing History
Since the beginning of videogames, one thing has been clear: marketing executives have no idea what the appropriate time would be to use rap in commercials and advertisements. Or how rap should sound. Or what it should be about. But "having no idea what we're doing" has never stopped an executive, so terrible/awkward raps became one of the cornerstones of the videogame ad industry. These are the 8 worst raps in videogame marketing history.
8. Supersonic Controller
The Supersonic Controller had a lot of hurdles this commercial tried (and failed) to leap: selling a wireless controller when the technology wasn't good enough to make that work, selling a controller shaped like a triangle (great shape for pizza, terrible shape for a controller), and convincing you it would work for the Nintendo – even though it was a third-party non-Nintendo-approved hunk of plastic that would embarrass MadCatz.
And what better way to stumble through this all than with a family-friendly rap (thus defeating the main appeal of rap in the 80's)? The problem is (besides being awful) that the rap can't even muster up the self-confidence to sell itself. They actually include the line "It will do." It's essentially saying that it gets the job done, but "Meh, It Works, Sorta" isn't exactly the ringing endorsement they thought it was.
Article The 10 Greatest Legend of Zelda Games In History
The Legend of Zelda is one of the greatest series in videogame history, with nearly every game being a classic in its own right. So, mostly just to get the internet really upset about something, we asked you to vote for your favorite Zelda game of all time. And after nearly 200,000 votes (you can see the full results here), you (well, a bunch of people who voted, which may or may not include you) have decided the top 10 games in the Legend of Zelda series, which has done pretty well for a series starring a kid who never speaks and doesn't even have his name in the title. So take a break from trying to figure out how the new Link to the Past game will affect the Zelda Timeline and read about the top 10 Zelda games of all-time.
10. The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Somewhat narrowly beating out the Oracle games (also developed by Capcom), comes the Honey, I Shrunk the Link entry of the Zelda series, The Minish Cap. The basic twist of the game was Link could put on a hat that turned him into an ant-sized hero as he went around searching for medallion halves and doing somersaults as he rolled around Hyrule.
The game is notable for being the first entirely new Zelda game produced for the Game Boy Advance, and one of the few Zelda games to be developed by someone other than Nintendo. Other than that, The Minish Cap is mostly just a colorful and well-made entry in the Zelda series with some solid puzzle-solving, although a Rick Moranis cameo would have been totally welcome.
Article 20 of the Worst Videogame Covers of All-Time
They say "Never judge a book by its cover," but they never said we couldn't judge videogames that way. Terrible videogame covers have a lot of explanations: laziness, confusion, the desire to depict an airbrushed photo of Tommy Lasorda that came to the artist during a night terror, etc. But they all share one common factor: they are hilariously awful. Here are 20 of the worst offenders of all-time.
(Note: We are excluding the Mega Man games, since we already covered them extensively.)
Ultimate Duck Hunting
What's Wrong With It: Welcome to the nightmare world of Ultimate Duck Hunting: Hunting & Retrieving Ducks, which seems like it should really change the title to give more focus to the enormous, god-like floating dog head that seems really disappointed in the badly de-saturated hunter's attempt to shoot a duck at his hip by aiming up into the sky.
Article Pokemon Google Trends Showdown
Google Trends is a great tool for seeing what the world is searching Google for, where they're searching it from, and how often they're searching it. It even has a feature where you can show different searches to compare their popularity over the past decade. As an experiment, we're comparing Pokemon searches with ones more applicable to real life, and seeing who came out the winner. The results may surprise you (if you think anything is more popular than Pokemon, that is)…
