TheAwesomeMichael Switch -es It Up

Episode 60: The Switch-filled sixtieth episode of the PokeProblemsPodcast! (Before we get into our show, Miz Sylver is hosting the gamer version of Family Feud at PAX South, be one of the "Survey Says" contributors by filling out this survey.) Tonight we have a special guest, The Awesome Michael! Follow @theawemic1 He is an amazing streamer who specialized in Mario Kart 7 for the 3DS! He's currently in training for this season's Mario Kart competitions. He's the defending Mario Kart 7 champion for all the US PAX's, so he will be attending Pax South (San Antonio, TX, Jan 27-29, 2017) where he will hang out with Miz Sylver and Pax East (Boston, MA, Mar 10-12, 2017) where he will be hanging out with both Miz Sylver and The Wolf Doctor if you want to catch up with him in person! He gives us the lowdown on his Twitch community and streaming set-up (including his Katsukity capture setup!) and his favorite color of Yoshi! Find him online!

The Awesome Michael and The Wolf Doctor also discuss the newest Switch reveal! Both Michael and Miz Sylver pre-ordered the grey package, and they both pre-ordered the Breath of the Wild! We discuss many different aspects of the Nintendo Switch, from the hardware, to the controllers, to the games, the price, the online service! It works out to, "We'll see!" doesn't it? The ideas are great, and the price is fair, but until you play those games and see how well the motion controllers work, you don't know! (Though we all agree that Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is pretty much a no fail beauty!) The Nintendo Switch and Play Preview Events are happening in the weeks leading up to launch; the New York event is happening tomorrow, January 15th, at 10 a.m. ET, in a secret location on the second floor of 849 Avenue of the Americas in NYC. Toronto is on January 29th, and more cities are upcoming...

An important Switch question for you all:

@NintendoAmerica @NintendoNYC @StreetPassBOS @mzsylver What colors of #nintendoswitch did you pre-order/want??? #pokeproblems @TheSwitchCast

— PokeProblems (@pokemoncast) January 14, 2017

And a few news items before we go:

• The most recent Pokemon Sun and Moon Global Mission also failed :(
• Pokemon Go released Gen 2 "babies" as hatchable in eggs. The Wolf Doctor and Miz Sylver both hatched Smoochums.
• On a personal note, props to Follow @_reiiko for achieving all our dreams by getting her Platinum Trophy in FFXV: BroQuest!

Thanks for listening! If you have any questions or comments, we want to hear from you. This week we really want to hear from you about your thoughts on the Nintendo Switch, the biggest gaming announcement of 2017 so far! Did you pre-order the Switch? Colors or grey? Do you want to challenge TheAwesomeMichael in Mario Kart 7? Tweet, email, or comment on the blog or Facebook to let us know!


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Matt Conquers GenghisCon

Episode 59: The fashionable fifty-ninth episode of the PokeProblemsPodcast! Tonight we have a special guest, Matthew Rowles, the executive director of GenghisCon, Colorado's oldest gaming convention! He tells us all about the history of GenghisCon and what to expect in this, its 40th year! We talk about the gaming, the cosplay, the special guests, the Golden Tentacle Kitties, and the live dungeon crawl! We hear the insider stories about the trials and tribulations of organizing the convention. We talk anime, Pokemon, and video game fandoms. And Matt sings the praises of Tabletop.events for convention organization!

GenghisCon takes place at the Radisson Southeast in Aurora, Colorado, Thursday, February 16th through Sunday, February 19th. Want to know more about GenghisCon?

• Check out the official convention website!
• Follow @evolve_cons
• Find the con on Facebook! And find Tacticon on there too!

And, a few news items:

• Pokémon Sun and Moon has a new Global Mission! This one has you finding and defeating pokemon using the Island Scan until January 9th.
• Pokémon GO is continuing the Holiday event! Santa Hat Pikachus are still available, and have been joined by a greatly increased spawn rate of starter/partner Pokémon and their evolutions until January 8th. There's also special packages for sale in the item shop, which feature lures at this time.
• Sailor Moon R: The Movie is happening! The Brattle Theater in Cambridge is showing it at 1pm Saturday January 21st and Sunday January 22nd. Tickets are still available for $15!

Thanks for listening! If you have any questions or comments, we want to hear from you. Do you want to adventure with Matt and Miz Sylver at GenghisCon? Want to hear more about that awesome Bioshock Dungeon Crawl? Have you caught any awesome extra-Alolan Pokemon in Sun and Moon using Island Scan? Tweet, email, or comment on the blog or Facebook to let us know!



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New Year's Pokemon!

Greetings Listeners! Hope your holiday season is going well! Tonight for New Year's Eve, we have a special treat for you... The return of our New Year's Eve special! Enjoy this blast from the not so distant past! Regular programming will return next weekend.

Thanks for listening! If you have any questions or comments, we want to hear from you. Did our New Year's special hold up over time? Does it take more champagne to make a good New Year's Eve party? Which pokemon do you think is the best dancer??? Tweet, email, or comment on the blog or Facebook to let us know!



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FFXV: BroQuest

Green Mario Strikes Again!

Episode 58: the freezing fifty-eighth episode of the PokeProblemsPodcast. This week eveyone is sick, and Green Mario steps up to the plate to pretend to play Pokemon! We start off with a quick chat about Super Mario Run, and a spoiler free review of Star Wars: Rogue One! Miz Sylver sent us a list of news items to chat about! This included the Failure of the first Pokemon Sun and Moon Global Mission... The Wolf Doctor blames it on the extra step of registering to participate. Pokemon GO is having their Jotho Holiday Event through December 29th, in which you can catch Pikachus with Santa hats! They also have introduced "baby" Pokemon such as Pichu in egg hatching. You should all enter the Say YES to Nintendo 3DS Sweepstakes, being thrown by Southwest Airlines and Nintendo. Enter daily between now and January 15th. Overwatch's Winter Wonderland special event is running through January 2nd, get holiday loot boxes that can include holiday skins, emotes, and more. Shantae: Half Genie Hero is finished, and if you Kickstarted it you should have your code in hand. We talk about Kickstarter, and how some great successes have come out of it, like Shadow of the Demon Lord.

Then we get to the heavy discussion: D&D Adventurers League! Greg Marks aka Follow @skerrit7h3green aka Green Mario talks about how D&D organized play is incorporating more writers and refuses to spill the secrets on the themes of Season 6 of Adventurers League. (Miz Sylver wrote an adventure for the current season, Giant Diplomacy, which is premiering at NewCon in Portland, Oregon December 30-January 1!) Greg does tell us about a bunch of new improvements being brought into Adventurers League. The new season will see more Tier 4 adventures (for characters level 17-20, high level characters!), to encourage players to continue through the league adventures. The Adventurers League has also incorporated player feedback to make the adventures easier to run. The adventures will feature highlighted story beats, to help ensure continuity between adventures, for example, if the players are supposed to retrieve an item for a later adventure, the DM will know in the current adventure; recurring NPCs will have added characterization so they a more consistent across adventures; encounters that utilize special rules will highlight those rules and have tips and tricks to make the encounter more interesting to play. In addition, Wizards is taking a more active roll in leading the D&D community, through customer service and organizations like the Heralds Guild. It's great that Wizards is paying more attention to D&D! If you want to see Green Mario in person, his early 2017 convention schedule is:

• Polar Vortex in Glen Ellyn, IL January 25-27.
• Winter Fantasy, February 1-5 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
• Conflagration 17, February 17-19 at the Sheraton Brookfield (near Milwaukee, WI).
• GaryCon, March 23-26 in Lake Geneva, WI.

How does he manage all this while working a day job and writing official Wizards of the Coast adventures and adventures for Kobold Press and Catalyst Game Labs? Don't forget to check out his most recently released adventure, The Vault of the Devourer! If you want to chat with Greg, you can contact him in many ways! His personal FaceBook, Follow @skerrit7h3green, Google Plus, emailing him at resource@dndadventurersleague.org or finding him in the Adventurers League Facebook.

Thanks for listening! If you have any questions or comments, we want to hear from you. Do you play D&D? What are your thoughts on Star Wars: Rogue One? Is Greg more of a Spiky Mario than a Green Mario? Tweet, email, or comment on the blog or Facebook to let us know!



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Craig Herndon is Virtually Real

Episode 57: the fantastic fifty-seventh episode of the PokeProblemsPodcast. Our special guest this week is Craig Herndon of Digital Precept! We have a fascinating conversation with him about what drew him to the world of VR, starting Digital Precept with his good friend Jonathan Schrack, the process of developing Digital Precept's upcoming VR title, Kung Fu: Shadow Fist, the stress of showing at PAX South, splitting his time as a member of the Boston VR community and the Memphis Game Developers community, and VR in general! Find him online on the web, on Twitter, on Facebook!

• Follow @craigtherndon on his personal Twitter!
• Follow @digialprecept to get the latest news on Kung Fu: Shadow Fist and other Digital Precept titles, demos, and events.
• Follow Digital Precept on Facebook and let Craig and his team hear your thoughts on their games!
• Follow @MemphisGameDev to get news about the MidSouth Indie Game Expo and hear about game development in TN!
• And speaking of the MidSouth Indie Game Expo, that's happening July 22, 2017 in Memphis!

Craig gives shout outs to a few awesome games, VR experiences, and Boston area developers:

• Boston Post Mortem
• House of the Dying Sun
• Wadjet Eye Games
• Ludum Dare
• VirZoom
• Ask an Enemy Studios
• Luminopia
• Notes on Blindness
• And of course his awesome team mates at Digital Precept, including Jonathan S., Jonathan Marlin, Desmond, George, and Francesca!

If you want to talk to Craig about VR in person (or just want to check out some great VR tech), go to next week's Boston VR Meetup, Thursday December 15th, featuring MakeField and Ilium VR.
We also talk about some news and events! Miz Sylver attended a talk last week on VR storytelling featuring Julia Sourikoff!

• Super Mario Run just had a special demo event in NYC.
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story comes out December 16th!
• Assassin's Creed starring Michael Fassbender comes out December 21st!
• The First Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon Global Mission Is Live! And speaking of Pokemon Sun and Moon, remember there's the Magearna you can get after you complete the game!
• Sprint is the newest partner of Pokemon GO!
• And of course, the results of last week's poll!
  

  @mzsylver OK who is the hotness of #FFXV : #BroQuest ? #noctis #gladiolus #Ignis #prompto ... results on next week's #pokeproblems

  — PokeProblems (@pokemoncast) December 2, 2016

Thanks for listening! Do you have a favorite VR headset? Are you planning to go the Boston VR Meetup next week? Do you want to ask Craig about his favorite VR games? Do you agree with the results of our BroQuest poll? Are you only going to see the Assassin's Creed movie because Michael Fassbender is the hotness? If you have any questions or comments, we want to hear from you. Tweet, email, or comment on the blog or Facebook to let us know!



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FFXV: BroQuest

Episode 56: The fantastical fifty-sixth episode of the PokeProblemsPodcast! This week we discuss a bunch of news!

• December's Pokemon of the Month is Meloetta, get it by December 24th!
• Tracking has returned in Pokemon GO!
• The PlayStation Experience 2016 is going on right now in Anaheim, California. Kojima is speaking today, Saturday December 3rd, at 1pm, and that's sure to be the hot ticket of the convention. The show floor features a huge number of playable games, including a game we touched on in Episode 45, 2064: Read Only Memories, starring the outstanding Jonathan Holmes Follow @tronknotts as "Froyo Guy"!
• The Defenders of the Tri-Force Escape Room is releasing new dates in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Diego. If you didn't grab tickets the first time now's your chance. The new tickets for San Francisco and Phoenix were available December 2nd, while the Los Angeles and San Diego tickets will be available December 5th.
• The Game Awards 2016 happened this week. Pokemon Go won the Best Mobile/Handheld and Best Family Game categories. Miz Sylver's beloved Overwatch won Game of the Year!

We have a long discussion about Final Fantasy XV: BroQuest! Miz Sylver got the Ultimate Collector's Edition and has been losing sleep playing it! She picked up two bottles of Wiz's Energizing Elixer at Target, which is a creamsicle flavored Jones Soda themed to Chocobos. And we have a very important question for you:

@mzsylver OK who is the hotness of #FFXV : #BroQuest ? #noctis #gladiolus #Ignis #prompto ... results on next week's #pokeproblems

— PokeProblems (@pokemoncast) December 2, 2016

Thanks for listening! Do you like the new tracking system in Pokemon GO? Did you score tickets to Defenders of the Tri-Force? Would you call it FFXV: BroQuest or FFXV: Goth Kingdom Hearts? If you have any questions or comments, we want to hear from you. Tweet, email, or comment on the blog or Facebook to let us know!



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