Budokai 3 vs Tenkaichi 3

It's quite a debate among fans about which of these two games is the better one. Recently TeamFourStar rated their own favorite Dragon Ball games and both Budokai 3 and Tenkaichi 3 were the favorites...

For TeamFourStar Budokai 3 ended up at the first place with Tenkaichi 3 as a close second. Personally I would have put it the other way around, but I can understand their rating for that order.

The general thing about Tenkaichi 3 which makes it my all-time favorite is, that you can fly easily through a big 3D arena and can fight against your opponent using several tactics. Plus we have 98 characters in 161 transformations making that DB game the one with the highest number of playable characters.

It's a game which does not get boring, if you want to fight against a friend once in a while. Selecting five fighters each and go for it. Also one of the only DB fighting games which come close to the real Dragon Ball fights.

In comparison Budokai 3 has not these kind of 3D elements. Of course you can move in a certain way, but the handling is nowhere close to Tenkaichi 3. The Raging Blast games (which were released for the next generation of consoles like PS3) came also close to that way of fighting, but it's not the same.

But still, there are elements in Budokai 3 I still favour: The story mode where you could fly around Earth and Namek (which was similar in Tenkaichi 2), the way you could unlock and add attacks and abilities.

Both games had iconic and awesome soundtrack I still love listened to today, although the ones from the Budokai series have its special flair (although some of the were reused the the first Tenkaichi game).

Generally: Both games set its benchmarks and are despite being older than 10 years still loved by fans around the world. And successors would be highly appreciated as many fan modder adding new characters from the Super series into these classic games (especially Tenkaichi 3).

So whichever of both games you prefer, I can understand both sites. 

Pokémon GO 0.87.5: Christmas, Hoenn and New Zealand

My hunt for new Pokémon continues - this time around Christmas time in New Zealand.

Even Pokémon GO gives you a Christmas feeling if try to catch a Pikachu you see the most famous pocket monster with a Christmas hat.

Apart from that some of the Pokémon from the Hoenn region have been released and once you run around the city you get plenty of them:
Treecko, Torchic, Seedot, Skitty, Meditite, Gulpin, Seviper, Poochyena,...

This is actually the last generation I'm aware of the names since I played a lot with the trading cards back then. Following the Advanced Generation I did not keep up with it, but that may changes!

Maybe I should also mention that I was confronted by the bug that once a Pokémon was caught the ball appeared in the initial throwing position again and jumped around as it was a Pokémon. You could only stop the scenario by pressing the run button at the top left. At the end the Pokémon unfortunately was not counted as caught.

But generally I enjoy catching the monster from the third generations. I will drop some updates from time to time...

Why is the PlayStation confirmation button O in Japan?

If you have ever played a PlayStation game in Japanese you may have noticed that the O and X buttons are used the other way around. But what is the reason behind it?

Back in the day when I installed tools like the file manager ULaunchELF on my PS2 and while testing the Japanese versions of 'Dragon Ball' games (which has another music score and that made me interested in changing it myself...) I was for the first time confronted with the difference in the function of the controller buttons. 

For some time I didn't question the reason behind it, but there's more to it which is quite interesting.

It's generally a cultural thing: As in western countries we are used to have an X to confirm something like marking the right answer in a quiz for example.

'X' means 'wrong' - not just at the Japanese PlayStation

In Japan they have a different association: The X is used for an incorrect answer in a test. It's meaning is ばつ (batsu) and has a general meaning for something negative like giving up and 'wrong'. So for in Japan it would be wrong to use it as a confirmation button.

The circle on the other hand the circle with the meaning まる (maru) has the meaning of 'correct' since the correct answer in a test is marked in a circle.

These can even be shown in gestures with arms or hands. Or in right-or-wrong games like 'batsumaru'.

This difference in terms of school tests corrections is actually a topic in the Detective Conan episodes 779 & 880 where a Japanese teacher who lived in America got it wrong after returning to Japan...

Looking at it from this perspective the different usage of the buttons makes totally sense.