As some you know, this past weekend I went up to Philadelphia to participate in the 2009 Pokemon Video Game Championships. Essentially it's a big tournament where Pokemon trainers face off against each other in two divisions, junior and senior, with the winners going to the Nationals in St. Louis. It was supposed to be a really fun event, but a new development in this year's rules made the whole thing pretty disappointing. This year, instead of letting everyone participate, they had entrants sign up and then randomly chose 128 people to participate in each division. This wouldn't have been so bad if around 256 people had attended, but as it happened NEARLY 600 PEOPLE SHOWED UP FOR THE SENIORS DIVISION ALONE.

Needless to say at this point, I didn't get in, but that's not what has me angry. What really ticks me off about this is the fact that people came from as far away as MILWAUKEE and didn't get in. All in all, this was just a really poor way to handle an event like this. They could have AT LEAST set up some sort of online registration where participants were chosen ahead of time so people wouldn't have had to waste time and money on travel. And don't tell me Nintendo can't afford the expenses associated with a bigger event or planning ahead: they're making money hand over fist right now. Nintendo, if you want to do a Pokemon tournament do it right, otherwise contract it out to someone else who will. This is no way to treat the fans of one of your most popular franchises.

Anyone who's listened to the GC Podcast or talked to me for even a few minutes since last October knows my opinion on Fallout 3: an excellent but fundamentally flawed game. One of my biggest problems with the game is the ending, but apparently in the new DLC expansion Broken Steel the finale has been completely changed. I won't spoil the plot for anyone with specifics, but essentially they made all the plot changes I was griping for and allow you to continue after finishing the main story quest.

Honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about this. On one hand, I'm glad to hear that BethSoft has finally fixed what was one of the biggest problems with the game and I feel validated in my assertions about the game's ending. On the other hand, I feel ripped off that, if I want to actually play the game AS IT SHOULD HAVE ORIGINALLY BEEN RELEASED, I need to pay extra. It's quite a racket BethSoft has going on here: releasing incomplete products then charging you outrageous sums of money for the fixes and marginal expansions to the game. I remember a time when an expansion to a game was a whole game within itself, not just little bit of tweaking here and there. Call me a luddite, but I remember those day quite fondly.

I haven't purchased any of the expansions yet, nor do I plan to do so until they package them together with a price cut. There was a time when tempation would have driven me to get download them as soon as they came out, but between my stubborness and GameFly (mainly GameFly) I think I should be able to hold out. Not to mention that, at least until June 6, I have bigger fish to fry.