That guy's a Maniac...

 We've mentioned before our love of the effort that goes into the artwork of Pokémon trading card game umm trading cards. Last time around we had a look at Chilling Reign but we're back for a spot of art judging for the whopping set Fusion Strike. As the name of the set hints to, Fusion Strike adds to the rapid and single strike gimmick introduced in the Battle Styles set by adding a third 'battle style' attribute that some cards have as well as adding more rapid strike and single strike pokémon cards and trainer cards. But we ain't interested in that are we? We're here for the pretty pictures.  Slugma  Unlike the video games, in the TCG, all pokémon are equal. That is, if they have a card, someone's got to go to the effort of making some card art for it. Sadly the Slugma-Magcargo line had to sit on the sidelines for Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield but makes a joyful return in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. We love this card art by artist olum

It seemed like there was a return of the late 1990's Pokémon card fad as bored rich Youtubers, blew the scene up again, the scalpers went a-scalping and professional card graders couldn't even keep up with the demand with the volume of cards being sent in for grading by locked down boredos desperate to cash in on the hype. Ultimately it lead to card shortages, as the millionaire youtubers and scalpers bought boxes by the hundreds and for a hot minute there it felt like everyone was cracking packs on their channel on the hunt for the illustrious chase card (one of the 4 million charizard cards most likely) and likes, follows and subscribes. Much like the NFT craze but slightly less pointless, it seemed like the cards themselves sort of got lost amongst the hype. But we've been long term fans of the game and even have the promo cards and PTCGO beta rewards to show it but today I'd like to look at an often overlooked aspects of the cards, the card art.  In the only readil

Younger gamers today don't know how good they've got it when it comes to taking screenshots, watching cutscenes, making videos or even just streaming a playthrough live at the touch of a button. On top of that it's possible to find centuries worth of clips, analysis videos and let's play to quickly grab that screenie or scrutinise every frame of a trailer or cutscene. With photo modes, share buttons and title screen galleries of movies it's never been easier to see Chun Li's knickers   capture your favourite bits from games from boring headshot compilation vids to those "you'd never believe it if you didn't see it" moments.  We've written a bit about share buttons before and a quick peek at the gigabytes of stored videos and images is testament to how frequently we use ours. Back in the day we'd have memory cards with various save games just before cool cutscenes and I remember resetting FFVII and FFIX games after a cool cutscene for t

If you're one of the three bots that occasionally crawls past this website, you'll know that Team TGAM are huge Pokémon fans and this half of Team TGAM is a self styled rock type connoisseur. Now the dust has settled, well barely , following  Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield 's (SW/SH) launch it's a good time to look at what this game has done for rock type pokémon. Sir Not Appearing In This Game Well, making no bones about it, the decision to not include all of the known pokémon species from previous games in SW/SH  has been pretty rough for the rocky bastards. Of the 62 rock type pokémon available in  Pokémon Ultra Sun and  Pokémon Ultra Moon, as measly 22 made it through the Thanos snap. That means, at the time of writing, there's no Geodude line, none of the 'true' fossils, Magcargo, Nosepass line, Aggron line, Relicanth, Regirock, Carbink, Diancie, Rockruff line, Minior or the two ultra beasts. Soooo not a great start. Teaser/trailer stuff for t

The World is an incredibly scary and unjust place at the minute and we've certainly found ourselves squandering our privilege by running to pastures digital to escape it all. Pokémon has been a staple franchise for us and arguably at the heart of the relationship of team TGAM and now feels like one of the best times to be a Pokémon player/fan. We're truly spoiled, despite what the very vocal minority has to say about the direction of the franchise. Here's a run down of just the last few months! Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield Despite being less than four months old it's been a whirlwind of events and activities that even daily checking of serebii.net  has meant it's been difficult to keep up. Since launch we've been treated to a whole series of raid den events, we got shiny Magikarp galore to celebrate the new year, a trickle of new gigantamax forms in Snorlax and Toxtricity, crazy weather for the leap day, a steady flow of mystery gifts, two online int

Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield are out, and have been for a while and although the Official That Guy's A Maniac Review(tm) has yet to come out, suffice to say we've both ploughed a heckuva lot of hours into it, especially the online components and it's good. It's very good. However, before we take a deeper dive in a review let's look at who made the final cut. We wrote about ' Dexit ' in the run up to release but now the games are out let's take a look at who is in and who is out. A bit of SPOILERS housekeeping first, we won't be talking about any of the new pokémon just which ones of the first 809 made the cut but there are some minor spoilers about pokémon with new forms so if you're still keeping yourself clean, look away now. Here's a handy chart of who is in and who is out at the time of writing. Look at it in amazement/despair. If you've ever played and liked a previous pokémon game, there's bound to be at least one or t

We've not been this excited for a new game for a while. Yes, there are National Dex (or lack thereof) 'woes' but we can't wait to jump into a new region, on the big screen, we're relatively spoiler free and there seems to be a tonne of quality of life improvements including, finally, thankfully being able to change natures of pokémon (easy mode though?). Will the open fields and valleys actually be open? Will the end game content be more Alpha Sapphire/Omega Ruby or X/Y ? Will the new additions to the pokédex end up as fan favourites or niche beasts? Has Omastar made it in? Funny how games can sometimes still get us like this.