The 'Shroom:Issue LXXVI/Critic Corner

Critic Corner

Director's Notes
The best news is no news, and that is what I have for you, my dear readers, this fine Winter day. No, I don't care that you're not in the southern hemisphere, this is my season and I'm sticking with it, and anyone who wants to argue will have to answer to my new picture over there. It's not actually new, it's been around a fair while now, but might as well brighten this corner up a little bit before I lose all my readers.

Also, still looking for writers for the following: AND your own personalised versions of sections already filled in. Just go to the sign up page for details.
 * Marioverse Reviews
 * Character Reviews
 * Virtual Console Reviews
 * Game Comparison
 * Movie Reviews
 * Book Reviews
 * Wiki Fiction Reviews

June Section of the Month
Half-way mark of the year has passed, and our beloved sees his first victory here in Critic Corner. I'm starting to think I should create a sub-page that lists all the SotM winners for Critic Corner now. Oh uhh yeah, Hottest Reviews Around won last month's SotM with 8 votes, discussing Pyro's early personal thoughts on the upcoming Pokemon X and Y based on information prior to Nintendo's E3 announcement.

The close runner up was with his section NSM's Review Corner, earning 7 votes, his section concerning his roster wishes for the upcoming Super Smash Bros. 4; and my own section, Crocodile Style Reviews, came in third with 5 votes, positively reviewing the beautifully dreadful experience of Metro: Last Light.

Man, we need more votes for this shit. Hey, all my readers out there; any suggestions on how to pretty this up? I'd really love the input.

Entertainment Section
Hello, this is YoshiMonsta and I have this month's article. Sorry for dropping to bi-monthly, but I've been very busy.

Today I am doing an article on a video from one of the popular Youtubers that you probably know very well, Smosh. This video that I am reviewing is called Rejected Mario Games. This is sort of a compilation of the many games that would not, and could not make it to the shelves (this is just a parody).

This video begins with a little introduction (with some nice Mario music), and then goes to Mario Weight Loss Adventures, where Mario apparently has to vomit in order to lose weight so he looks good at the prom. This appearance of Mario was sort of humorous, in how obviously fake Mario's mustache is, and how his stomach sticks out like a pot belly. Once he explains his dilemma you must tap the (A) button in order to make Mario vomit.

After that it proceeds to having a little clip about Mario Tax Returns where Mario is apparently bartering with Luigi, and he is talking about whether or not Yoshi should be included as a dependent in Mario's taxes. When Mario finally gets his way he goes outside and Yoshi immediately jumps off a cliff. Next comes a weird clip called Mario XXX in that Mario comes to "Clean Peach's Pipes" which is definitely made to seem like something inappropriate is about to happen, when Mario says "Pipes are a-clean!" and it turns out nothing weird was happening at all.

Next comes Sims Mushroom Kingdom edition where Mario is drowning, and apparently Wario had removed the Ladder. Then there is Mario office where Mario is sitting at a desk and hates his life. Mario's Mansion is a little spoof on Mario hating being in Luigi's Mansion, therefore giving the job of being the hero to Luigi. Then there is perhaps the most ridiculous game of all, Mario Teaches Walking, where there is a player pressing the (A) and (B) buttons to make Mario walk. Second to last, here comes Mario Dress-up, in this little clip Mario is dressing up in an outfit that looks like Peach's outfit. Last of all, here comes Mario Kart DMV Edition, where Mario basically waits for a few hours to get his cart registered.

Here is the video if you wanted to watch it yourself. So see you later!

114PB9P-XXQ

NSM's Review Corner
Hey guys, it's NSM, reviewing games as usual. Now, I know I promised you guys I was going to review Animal Crossing: New Leaf for this issue, but I don't think that is going to happen. You see, the game runs in real time so it basically never ends. Now I've had the game for a while now, and even though it seems like a lot of time, it's really only a taste of the full experience the game has to offer. So I've decided to not do it in this issue, and do it in a future issue or something, but we'll just have to wait and see.

So what is it you're reviewing then? Good question. This issue I’ve decided to Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!. If you know me on the forums, you should know that I'm a HUGE Spyro fan, so you should have been expecting me to review this sooner or later. Alright let’s begin. The Spyro series, along with the Crash Bandicoot series, is basically the equivalent to Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64. Although for me, nostalgia might play a big role in it, I feel like if you compare Spyro 2 to Super Mario 64, Spyro 2 is a lot better in gameplay, story, and different worlds. Like Super Mario 64, Ripto’s Rage is a platforming game that takes you through various worlds, just like Super Mario 64. The games may seem similar just by looking at the overall gameplay, but really they are quite different if you dig a little further.

The story begins when Spyro, a dragon if you didn’t catch on that already, and his friend Sparx, a dragonfly whose color serves as your health meter, decide they want to take a vacation to Dragon Shores. However, after going through a portal (like painting in Super Mario 64 portals serve the basis of getting into different worlds), they end up landing in a place known as Avalar, instead of sunny, bright, Dragon Shores. They encounter three characters: the Professor, Hunter the cheetah, and Elora the faun. They needed to get a dragon since they wanted to fight off Ripto who’s been terrorizing Avalar, so the Professor has to use orb power to get one through a portal. When Spyro reaches Avalar, Ripto shows up, destroys the portal back to the Dragon Realms, and later agrees to help Elora stop Ripto.

Now the gameplay of the game is so good. I mean, how can playing as a dragon NOT be fun? As in the first game, Spyro can attack enemies by charging at them with his horns or flaming them. He also retains the power to glide short distances. Throughout the course of the game, Spyro will gain new abilities, such as the ability to swim underwater, being able to climb, and headbashing, all of which require you to pay a fee of gems to the greedy character, Moneybags. Another cool feature is the Powerup gates. These special gates allow Spyro to do loads of different things, like fly forever for a short time, or walk on acid.

Each world has three main objectives to complete if you want to 100% it. Collect all the gems in the level, complete all the orb challenges, and get the talisman from one of the characters from that world. Each world is in one of three homeworlds and can be accessed through portals. These worlds have their own unique setting and feature awesome quirky characters (sorry Super Mario 64, random floating platforms are kinda lame.) I think I’ve been hating on that game a bit too much, but hey, Spyro 2 is the better game. Anyway, each world just holds so many unique challenges and characters; it just kept me coming back for so much more. Unlike Super Mario 64 where you just had to collect a star (lol, hating again), each world in Spyro offers multiple orb challenges which offer more variety and gameplay than Super Mario 64’s star system. Both games do offer a similar challenge, but Spyro 2 just lets you have more fun doing it.

At the end of each homeworld there is a boss battle. The boss battles in this game are great, and are on par with Super Mario 64’s. The Gulp and Ripto boss battles are probably some of my favorite boss battles in any game ever. Additionally, the music to this game is so amazing. Again, probably on par with Super Mario 64's.

Now I understand probably most of you reading this have no means to pick up such an old game (and then again one that’s not on a Nintendo console), but If you have a PS3, all three classic Spyro games are available on the Playstation Network so I encourage you to try them out. If you’ve never really even heard of Spyro and are still somewhat confused, there is lots of information of the Spyro Wiki, so be sure to check out Spyro 2’s page. That’s the end of a rather short review today, but it is a shame such an awesome series has been ruined by another company (that’s another story, you can hear me rant about that on the forums if you’d like :P).

Pros: Awesome quirky characters and cool voice acting, a game you can really connect to, awesome worlds that aren’t random platforms everywhere, fun orb challenges that offer new gameplay experiences, additions of gameplay like swimming and powerup gates, you play as a dragon, awesome boss fights, awesome music, my favorite game of all time .

Cons: Mediocre story (but still pretty good compared to most platforming games)

Overall rating: 10/10

Got an idea for a game I should review? PM me, NSM, on the forums!

Crocodile Style Reviews


Wow, have there been a lot of shooters released this year, or perhaps it's just that I've had an unfortunate choice of review games. Look past every 2013 game I've reviewed so far and they all involve shooting prominently in some way or another, you'd think a game industry dominated primarily by America would be a bit more reserved about that kind of thing, but oh well. It makes my first step away from that genre all the more refreshing, although guns would certainly fit the motif of Remember Me more than most games given that all fights would probably end quicker if anyone in the police thought to just shoot the proven martial arts expert with the ability to blow up people's minds.

Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? Remember Me is a release from the ludicrously named Dontnod Entertainment, set in a futuristic version of Paris that presumably lost the Hundred Years War because everyone inexplicably has a pronounced British or American accent. It follows the equally ludicrously named Nilin, a character who garnered much controversy from publishers prior to release due to being a – and you'll never fucking believe this one – a girl! I know, right? And a black one, for that matter; the nerve of those crazy developers going out of their way to frighten away all the good white folk in my community! Oh wait, I'm thinking of Alabama. Anyway, Nilin is introduced with all her memories being taken away by a totalitarian corporation called Memorize, creators of a software-like system that allows the digital storage of memories, complete socioeconomic dominance in the name of eliminating all bad memories, and free lobotomies on the weekend. Nilin escapes with help from one The Edge, of which the obvious U2 joke is too low-hanging a fruit for my tastes, subsequently places blind trust in his rebellion, and sets out to reobtain her memories and maybe restore the balance of power if there's enough time in the day. The setting for Remember Me should be everything I want out of a game, and yet things just didn't really click for me as well as I'd hoped. On the one hand, it does that Mirror's Edge thing of juxtaposing clean, bright, almost clinical environments with a controlling government with absurd punishments in what I like to call The Singapore Design, which is always as visually pleasant to me as a pavlova wearing a top hat. On the other hand, it seems like Nilin spends a very small amount of time actually taking in the scenery, and she seems to just sort of move from one location to another in most cases with loose connectivity at best. The characters aren't really anything exciting, either; Nilin alternates rather jarringly between being a powerful kickass and a whimpering child, and the vast majority of dialogue is either juvenile one-liners or whinging, particularly in the case of the villains who sound like they got lost on their way to the set for an old Batman routine and just decided to roll with it.

So yeah, world is sort of a bust, but what about the gameplay? Let me answer that with another question; when you think of a game built around the concept of memory manipulation, what comes to your mind in terms of gameplay? For me, it's espionage, stealth, subterfuge, possibly even some Psychonauts-styled mental exploration to help flesh out the personalities of the major characters; you know, loads of fun, enthralling ideas that this game includes absolutely none of. Admittedly, I got my hopes up for this imaginary version of the game because it ticks off most of the boxes on my checklist of things I desire in my games to justify my nerdy alienation from all my peers, and dammit I just want to think the games industry actually gives a shit for once.

Gameplay is largely just the standard punch-'em-up affair, being built solely on two attack buttons and the occasional special move possessing stupid names like Rust in Pieces or Logic Bomb. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with the combat in and of itself, after all if a game wants to blow up heads than who am I to question its glorious, twisted artistic vision, but it feels like sort of a waste of concept when that's pretty much all that's being done. I mean, what is the point of basing your game around memory psychology when all you're going to use it for is a justification for the art style? Although I must say, I find it funny how a game where you literally cause people's brains to explode only gets an M rating here because at least there's no blood to corrupt the kiddies, right? There's something more to be said about the combo customisation that the game places a strong emphasis on, titled Pressens because we're not quite done with stupid names for this production quite yet. It's a really nice idea and one that certainly deserves a lot of credit, but Remember Me ' s definition of customisation is handing you five already established button combinations that you just place different attack effects into. These include extra damage, increased focus for special attacks, chained attacks, and health restoration of all things, because breaking a few noses is exactly what I need when my internal organs are sitting on a coatrack in Brussels. It's just a bit of a waste, and having to pause the game in the middle of the action to fiddle around with the combos isn't my idea of grade-A entertainment, although being able to continue a combo after you've dodged over an enemy during their attack keeps the flow of combat moving along nicely enough to almost counteract the micromanagement tedium.

But I guess what gets on my nerves the most is that the only gameplay acknowledgement of the overarching memory theme is the Memory Remix feature, which primarily entail simply watching a cutscene, and then using your magical memory remote to shuffle back and forth through the cutscene until the game points out something that can be changed. Uhhh yeah, Dontnod, as much as I'd love to sit through your beautiful cutscenes a dozen times, I really did kind of come into this expecting an actual game to play. It is nice that there are several dead end results you can reach by changing the wrong things, which turned it into a personal challenge for me to deduce what needed to be changed ahead of time rather than just shuffling through every option, but the real problem here is that the concept is really insubstantial. You only do it four times in the entire campaign, as if the game is ashamed to be associated with them, and it really does feel like so much more could be done with memory remixing than just this. Hell, throw it in mid-combat, I'd love to go all Prototype in this shit and make the guards shoot their partners in complete paranoia. The game's story really does suffer from predictability, with the entire amnesiac setup effectively shining a big neon sign saying “GET READY FOR A BIG TWIST!” It was so obvious something shocking was about to go down that I really just couldn't bring myself to care, which is just as well since the game lacks the same conviction. There's a bit of an exploration on the ethical issues concerning changing people's memories for the greater good thereby robbing them of their free will, and one scene even shows someone offing themselves because of their altered memory which Nilin exhibits genuine remorse for, but by the end of the game that little point of intrigue is completely dropped in favour of more fisty fighty. And not to be a complete cockweasel, but the final boss is airlifted from inFamous 2; I'm sorry, it really is.

It's probably a bit unprofessional for me to keep nagging on about the game not being what I wanted it to be, but what it is is boring. Although it is the most curious type of boring to me, the kind that shows signs of a much better game desperately clawing at the surface to get out, which says to me that what's really needed now is a sequel to properly flesh out and explore all the mechanics and ideas the game so depressingly squandered. C'mon, Dontnod, I believe you have the strength in you for this; if not for me, do it to silence all the lifeless douchenozzles that'll start feigning forgetfulness in mocking jokes of the kind that should be considered a cultural sin by now. I'll even help you guys out with that; let's see the cheeky blighters forget their way out of a textbook of horrible Australian puns!

Hottest Reviews Around
Steam has recently started its new Steam Greenlight thing, where you can submit your games for a one-time $100 USD fee. "Oh, this will be good!" I thought to myself when I first heard about it. "I can actually submit my games! Also, indie developers can get their games in without too much trouble!"

The problem is that it's good in theory, but so was communism. Or something. I'm not communist. Anyways, there were plenty of games submitted. I believe there's been around 100 approved, but only around 40 released. The point is that you get people interested in your game when it's still in alpha or beta, so games aren't released as soon as they're greenlighted.

So, there were three games that caught my eye: one non-released game that was some Angry Video Game Nerd thing and I probably am right when I say that it was greenlighted by all of his fanboys. Next were two released games: No Time To Explain, a mess of particle effects and loud noises, and DLC Quest, a god-awful platformer buying simulator thing.

I chose DLC Quest, as it seemed saner then Particle Maelstrom 2013. DLC Quest is a platformer where you play as a boy that can barely do anything at first, and you have to buy extremely basic things as DLC. With in-game coins, of course. Then everyone would be pissed off. Walking left, sound, animation, double jumping, and even simple game progression are all restricted into DLC. It also acts like it's the most fucking hilarious game ever, calling its achievements "Awardments", putting a sign that warns you of random encounters ahead but you simply find someone named Random Encounters, and the such. It just continued with cardboard humor until the end of the game. It even threw in some disgusting comedy, where to get an awardment you have to kill every human and sheep in the game. I never, ever found this funny at all.

The main campaign is a very condensed world with two areas, one of which is very small. There's a grassland and a forest. Whoop-dee-doo, the best fucking variety I've seen in a while. Both areas have a DLC guy that you buy shit from. The DLC packs you buy are very simple things that just make you progress in the game; from a game with a concept like this you would expect many whimsical packs that maybe...put butter on your head. Or turn the game upside down. But no, the closest we get to this are a few DLC packs such as the Top Hat pack and the Sexy Outfits Pack, which you can imagine is more cardboard humor then anything in the world.

There are two endings to the main campaign, one which makes the horse get shot and another which makes the villain get shot. You need another DLC pack to get the good ending. Oh by the way, did I mention that simply after buying the final progression DLC pack you go right to the ending? No final area, no final boss, heck, not even a fucking boss! Are they trying to create some fake replay value or something?



There are also some cheap things called Hidey Holes, which are obvious-to-spot places in dirt that aren't edges that you can walk right through to find coins. There's an achievement that tells you to find one, but you have to find a specific one, the first one that you pass if you walk right long enough. I'll give you a hint. It's in the cave past the trees. What a puzzler!

But you know what the real kicker is? It's fucking fifteen minutes long if you're not dumb. Fifteen minutes. I thought VVVVVV was short, but what the fuck?! It's three dollars to boot, but I got it during a sale so I probably saved half my anger at this game, because such a great idea is gone to waste in a rushed, cardboard, terrible game that lasts less than my attention span for obnoxious Super Meat World levels. I'm incredibly pissed off at this game.

BUT WAIT, there's more! Guess what the kicker is? Everything that they could have put in the main campaign is slapped on in the bonus Live Freemium or Die campaign, which I didn't even bother to play, but my brother beat it in another fifteen minutes. There was a final boss this time around, but it was extremely linear and was just "avoid the projectiles and then buy your way to winning!". Fun, fun, fun.

Again, this review is probably short like my VVVVVV review, but '''don't. Fucking. Buy. This. Game.''' Even if it's likely got more pre-installed content than Audiosurf and what some people would call a reasonable price, it's not even worth the three dollars! It's an extremely short game with wasted potential that I would only recommend to brain-dead assholes.

Ugh, I fucking hate this game.

Should Have Been
Soo, you may remember there was this special issue last month? Yeah, that one. You also may remember that Should Have Been was absent from that. Well, I did write a section, and it took me ages to complete because I wrote a lot and added a load of images, not to mention how I still had exams to do at that time. Turns out it took me so long, I sent it in too late to be used in the issue (yay).

So this month my section thinks it's in the special issue, with tons of fancy pictures and everything! Enjoy:

Welcome to a special edition of Should Have Been! Since Critic Corner's all about Pokémon, I thought "Hmm, why not make a section about Portal 2?" Or at least, Nabber did:

"Alright, you asked for Should Have Been suggestions, so of course I'm here to suggest Portal 2''.

But seriously, there's a lot that didn't make it into the game, so it might be interesting for you to do."''

Thanks for your suggestion, Nabber. Now, while I own both Portal games, having acquired both for free, a fact of which I am rather proud of for some odd reason, I haven't played either yet, as I've only had a computer able to play them for around five months, and I'm scared I won't be able to figure the game out. Nevertheless, maybe in the future, but not now, for today is all about Pokémon.

But I can't really think of much to be improved on in the Pokémon games - I'd just end up being really nitpicky - even moreso than usual – so, instead of suggesting what should have been in the Pokémon games, I'll go over some beta elements in all of the Generations.

Generation I (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow)
First off, there were originally meant to be 190 Pokémon in these games, as opposed to the 151 included. If you take a look at the list of Pokémon by index number on Bulbapedia, you can see there are indeed 190 Pokémon, and that they are in an order different to the Pokédex - this is possibly their order of creation, as, fun fact, Rhydon was the first Pokémon ever created. But notice how many times the famous glitch Pokémon MissingNo. appears? These are probably Pokémon that were removed. Perhaps some Generation II Pokémon were meant to appear in the original games? Maybe that's why Togepi and Ho-Oh appeared so early in the anime.

There was originally a Bird type in the games, which was presumably replaced by Flying type. It's remained in the game as a glitch type, which two glitch Pokémon hold - one of which being the aforementioned MissingNo. In addition to an unused type, there was also an unused field move, which was likely going to be a HM. In the list of field moves, its entry is between Fly and Surf. An unused text sting that may be connected to it, as the string for HM Move Strength is located nearby, says "Ground rose up somewhere!" From this, one can infer it'd probably have been a Ground-type move, to possibly allow the player to get up to higher places. Another interesting thing about this move is that it has the move ID 0xB4 - the highest ID in the final game is 0xA5, so this hints that there were probably even more removed moves in the game. A beta trainer class called "Chief" was removed from the game. When the data for him is accessed in the game, he takes on the appearance of the Scientist trainer class. Interestingly, the Japanese name translates to "Silph's Chief", which implies the player would have battled the President or another senior member of Saffron City's Silph Co. Another trainer who was removed is the man himself, Professor Oak. Battling Professor Oak would've been a nice extra at the end of the game, it's a shame he was removed - he even has a good team: Tauros, at Level 66; Exeggutor, at Level 67; Arcanine, at Level 68; Gyarados, at Level 70; last but not least, and most interestingly, either Venusaur, Charizard or Blastoise at Level 69. The last one would obviously be based on which Starter Pokémon you took - most likely the one neither the player nor their rival took.

Generation II (Gold, Silver, Crystal)
The Generation II games have a lot of Maps that were deleted in the final game. First up is a house in Olivine City, containing a Rhydon and a woman who claims "When my POKéMON got sick, the PHARMACIST in ECRUTEAK made some medicine for me." - note how the pharmacy is actually located in Cianwood City in the final game, instead of Ecruteak City. A Safari Zone Map was also removed, as the area was replaced by the Bug-Catching Contest. It is unfinished, to the point where it has no exit. There are a few unused Caves in the game, and also an unused room in the Ruins of Alph. There's also a complete map of the laboratory on Cinnabar Island, which, in the final game, had been destroyed and held just a Pokémon Center. Finally, a map of the Pewter Museum of Science appears despite it being closed in the final game. There are quite a lot of unused maps in this game; this is barely scraping the surface. You can read more here.

There's a lot of unused text in these games. There are some location names: ranging from those that weren't in the game, such as "SAFARI ZONE" or "POKéMON MANSION" (which was on Cinnabar) to those that were and had names, but they weren't pointed out, such as "LAV RADIO TOWER". Others range from fairly normal ("It's going to hatch!", "That can't be used right now.") to the interesting ("The password is:", "Warping...", "The compatibility is _____.”, “Should they breed?") to the slightly weird ("Obtained the VOLTORBBADGE!", "No windows avail-able for popping!") to the rather worrying ("Oh, no. Oh, no… My daughter is missing. No… She couldn’t have gone to the BURNED TOWER. I told her not to go near it… People seem to disappear there… Oh, what should I do…?"). A lot of these indicate mechanics or sidequests that were removed from the game - the breeding one's quite interesting, because that's a completely different way to how it worked in the final game. There's also some leftover text from the Generation I games, and an item called the SILPHSCOPE2, which would've replaced the SquirtBottle, which was used to move Sudowoodo.

The player, at one point, had the ability to name their mother. There were also a few removed field moves - Pay Day and Error!, the former being interesting due to it being Meowth's signature move. A few trainer sprites were changed from the Japanese versions to the versions elsewhere in the world - for example, the Fisher was smoking in the Japanese version, but this was changed elsewhere. There's also eight Pokémon - Eevee, Porygon, Dragonair, Togetic, Umbreon, Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres - who have a chance of fleeing when encountered wild, but the first five don't appear in the wild, and the last three are legendary, so, since they can only appear in one place, and appear in the overworld, it'd be pointless.

Generation III (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, LeafGreen)
Firstly, the Generation IV Pokémon Shellos and Gastrodon were originally planned to appear in this Generation. Shellos and Gastrodon have two types - a pink West Sea version and a blue East Sea version. Unused back sprites from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (yes, I know we've kinda gone into Generation IV) show how these two Pokémon would have appeared in this game - Shellos was a mixture of its West Sea's colouring with its East Sea's shape, and Gastrodon had more rocky protrusions than in the final game, and was still coloured pink. Groudon, Treecko and Torchic also had different appearances in concept art, and there was also some art of some bizarre cross between Blaziken and Latias, along with an unused trainer. There is some unused music in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, including remastered versions of some Generation II themes, such as Route 38 and the battle with Suicune. There was an unused ability in Ruby and Sapphire known as Cacophony. It was exactly the same as the ability Soundproof, which is presumably why it was removed. In Altering Cave, usually just Zubat can be found, but the cave was meant to have another purpose - the player had to use the Mystery Gift function at a Nintendo "Wonder Spot" to make other Pokémon appear, but, as there were none of these Wonder Spots created, this feature was left unusable. If it was usable, Mareep, Aipom, Pineco, Shuckle, Teddiursa, Houndour, Stantler, and Smeargle would've been able to be caught there. Over in the Generation I remakes, Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, there's two unused houses in the game, one of which was where the Pikachu's Beach minigame was located in Pokémon Yellow. Finally, there are unused overworld sprites for the following Pokémon in these games: Mew, Celebi, Deoxys' Attack and Defense forms, Raikou, Suicune and Entei.

Generation IV (Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, SoulSilver)
There's a load of unused items, many of which wouldn't become important or obtainable until later games. For example, the Azure Flute was an event item that was never distributed, but, if hacked into the game, would trigger an event with Arceus. The Magma Stone, another unused item, was only handled by NPCs, before actually becoming obtainable in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2. In Pokémon Platinum, while the Battle Tower has undergone major changes since Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, the exterior of the old one is included in the game as an unused map. Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, there were three unused attacks, though not a lot of details are known about them. While the area once known as Route 23 leading up to Victory Road was renamed to the "Indigo Plateau" in these games, as it was in Generation I, the location data for Route 23 still exists. Data from previous Generation IV games was left in this game, which is hardly surprising. However, a lot of files about the Underground from the previous games still exist - even the mining minigame - which could suggest that the underground was once planned to appear in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. Finally, in all of the Generation IV games, a version of Arceus - as Arceus, holding different items, becomes a different type - for the ???-type was created. It's unknown what the ???-type was actually meant to be, surprisingly enough. The move Curse is listed as ???-type, so it may have had something to do with that.

Generation V (Black, White, Black 2, White 2)
An unused event item called the Lock Capsule from Generation IV was meant to be unlocked in this game. If taken to Mr. Lock in Castelia City, it would've been unlocked and revealed TM95 Snarl, which was, therefore, unavaliable in the game due to the absence of the Lock Capsule. There was also an unused item called the God Stone, which was a grey recolour of the Light or Dark Stone, and had an unknown effect. There's also a modified version of Nacrene Museum in the game's code with a lot of differences, such as a Soda Machine in the museum and a load of polygons in bizarre places. There's also placeholder data for an alternate form of Kyurem, which wouldn't come into play until Pokémon Black 2 and White 2. Speaking of Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, Route 10 was removed in that game, but there still exists both Location and Map data for it in the game. That's about the most interesting beta element in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2. Seriously.

So that's it for Should Have Been this month. Thanks for reading, if you did, and I hope you enjoy the rest of this issue! Also, I got quite a lot of this information from the Cutting Room Floor and Bulbapedia, so you should check them out if you want to learn more.

'''Send me a personal message on the Super Mario Boards if you wish to see me cover a certain game in the future. See you in August!''