Pokemon in a Dangerous Time

 

The 20th anniversary of the Japanese release of the original Pokemon came and went this week, and just about every outlet and podcast that I frequent posted their "Pokemon origin story," so I figured I'd go ahead and lead this post with my own.

Shortly after graduating college, I totalled my truck.  Now I know that QA testers live baller lifestyles these days, but back then, my only choice was to get a bus pass and a Gameboy Color.  After finishing Links Awakening DX and playing the excellent Mario Golf (GBC) into the ground, I went to the internet to see what the top rated gameboy games were and came up with Pokemon Trading Card Game (GBC).  That's right, a gameboy game, based on a card game, based on a gameboy game.  However, unlike the all-too-painful Street Fighter: The Movie (arcade), it was an excellent game with thoughtful design and compelling gameplay, along with the hook of link cable play for card duels and trading.

An embarrasingly short time later, I was hanging out in card shops, running my Rain Dance deck against ALL the 6-10 year olds in my neighbourhood.  I even retooled my work schedule so that I could get to the weekly Pokemon TCG league (it was held after school on tuesday and thursdays). Not long after that, I ended up picking up a copy of Pokemon Yellow and the rest is history.

Until the last few years.  My Pokemon addiction peaked with HeartGold/SoulSilver and has slowly been tapering off such that I skipped Black/White 2 and OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire.  I just can't be bothered to collect all 8 badges, beat the Elite 4, become the very best like no one ever was, and proceed to spend hundreds of hours breeding and raising Pokemon only to get destroyed online by little kids and neckbeard bronys (Pinkie Pie 4 Lyfe).

The formula has become stale, and it's unlikely that Game Freak will do anything about it. As this is THE super kid-friendly franchise, we can assume that when lapsed pokemaniacs fall off, there will be more than enough in the way of younger gamers to come pick up the slack. The only problem is, when was the last time you saw anyone under the age of 12 with a dedicated handheld gaming platform?

These games NEED to acknowledge the impact of increased smartphone usage and Minecraft on the gaming habits of today's kids.  Cater more to the established fans and give them more ways to enjoy the franchise, while leveraging Nintendo's unique market position, and appeal to the kids who think that video games are played by touchscreen alone.

While Sun/Moon was just announced, NX has been looming large over Nintendoland for the last couple years and it would be just money left on the table if these two weren't used to sell each other.

I would love to see a Sun/Moon companion app that allowed people to save multiple teams for wireless battle, along with some DeNA produced free-to-play games.  If those games unlocked rewards in the 3DS games, there's that hook that Nintendo wanted to bring people to their core business. 

Kat Bailey of USGamer suggested that the mainline series could/should undergo a major upheaval in allowing the player to become a gym leader after the campaign was finished, so you'd have to pick your gym type, decorate it, build and level your subordinate trainers teams, take on challengers, and manage other city-building elements.  Game Freak is pretty conservative with their core franchise, however, and if something like this were to be released, I'm thinking it would be in a spin off.

Call the console game "Pokemon World" (because it's more pithy than "Pokemon Earth" and we should tie it in with Sun/Moon) and have people build and maintain different gyms, and have 3DS players go around collecting  "World Badges" or whatever.  Couple that with 4 player connectivity (for 3DS or smartphone) to the console version, and you have a great infrastructure for local battle, trading, or hidden info second screen games that would greatly expand the scope of the "Stadium" series of Pokemon games.  We would get a new game type, the die-hards' hand held game is untouched, and Nintendo gets to sell everyone games on three platforms.  Win, win, win.

Will it happen?  Probably not.  I've been a Nintendo fan longer than most, and I still have no clue what those people are thinking.  Regardless, speculation is kind of the "third pillar" of videogame fandom, after playing games, and arguing with strangers about them, so I'd like to hear what you think Game Freak should do in these uncertain times.  What is Sun/Moon going to look like?  How can they use NX to support the franchise?

Steak Time!

I don't get going to steakhouses. As long as you're set up for it, steak is one of the easiest foods to make spectacular. Good steak really boils down to one thing: the quality of the meat. Everything else you do to it will either BRING OUT the quality of the steak, or generally make it worse, you can't really make bad meat good. In Canada, and especially in Alberta, you can get pretty good meat at Costco, and I'll do a post on our relationship with Costco in a bit, but we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves. Get a good grill, get a good cut and master your technique. I'm being kind of reductive here, because there are ways to get around a bad cut, but I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to steak.

 Your grill is the first step. Size of grill doesn't matter, but the higher the BTUs, the better, generally speaking. You want to maillard reaction the shit out of that. As a very general rule, the things that
cause cancer are the things that taste good, and the charring of the meat is what creates the best flavour compounds. Science! Aside from "more power", you also want to have ceramic coated cast iron grills, NOT stainless! Stainless is for suckers, by which I mean, they don't retain heat as well. If you don't or can't or won't have a grill, then a heavy bottomed pan is an acceptable alternative, with a good oven and a really good oven mitt. The heavy bottom is important, cast iron is good, but if you're not going cast iron, make sure it's oven safe.

After you have your set up, choosing your cut is the next step. There are several cuts of steak available, but generally, the less you paid for the meat, the longer you want to marinade it. Also, I prefer my steak to be between 0.75" and 1.25" thick. Any less, and it's harder to guage doneness. Any more, and it's too difficult to get a consistent finish throughout. Marbling is also important! You want a piece that has nice, even marbling, with fat distributed throughout the meat. This is key to the flavour of a good steak. Here's a quick breakdown of my favourite cuts (along with my quick thoughts on some of the others):

Tenderloin - This is the "filet" of the cow. It is also the most expensive cut. If you're eating this, you're doing it with your pinkies up. As the name would suggest, it's the most tender meat, and as such, is highly prized. I hate it. It's not as well marbled as the ribs (see below), which is why Filet Mignon is wrapped in bacon prior to cooking. Don't get me wrong, this is a good piece of meat, I'm just a savage who doesn't appreciate the finer things in life.

 Rib Steak - This is a steak cut from the rib primal (one of the eight basic beef cuts in butchering), this is basically sliced off of prime rib roast, but with the bone on. When you order this at a restaurant, they know that you know your shit. This is my favourite steak, bar none. Having the bone on will impart slightly more flavour, and have the second most palatable gristle on a side of beef (important for those of you concerned about your joint health), but will also make it slightly harder to guage doneness, as the bone will conduct heat, so tread cautiously. Pick a well marbled piece (which isn't hard to do, because this cut is among the most heavily marbled on the cow), and you're good to go. This is also known as "cowboy steak" as back in the old west, it was what was served on the trail, because the bone made for a convenient handle (this may be apochryphal), but most rib steaks have the bone trimmed down though.  Some restaurants will serve an obscenely large cut of this steak with full bone (or two) called a Tomahawk steak, usually for two people. In my opinion, this is unnecessary. Just order two smaller steaks. 

Rib Eye - This is pretty much the same as the rib steak, except that it doesn't have the bone or the bone-adjacent meat. Easier to cook than rib steak, and smaller at the same thickness, this is an excellent compromise to budget, space, and common sense. This is what we make at home. Going to Costco and buying a whole boneless rib primal will run you about $150-160 these days. Pop that bad boy in the deep freeze for about 3 hours, then use a bread knife to cut it into between 18-22 1-inch steaks. Pop them into freezer bags (marinade optional) and you've got yourself steak dinners for a fraction of the price of The Keg. Hell, Gotham in downtown Vancouver charges that much for their Tomahawk, and it's a la carte (I found out the hard way that that means no sides). Yeesh. Ellen and I usually bag two at a time, and split one for lunch and another for dinner. Economical, delicious and it really makes the co-workers jealous.

 Striploin - AKA the New York Steak. You know it, and you love it. This one is the most "steaky" looking steak. A good balance between tenderness and flavour, this one is probably the most well known, and the easiest steak to make well. Generally well marbled, and reasonably tender. This is the kind of steak commonly used for steak sandwiches (the kind where its a whole steak on a piece of garlic bread), and peppersteak. This one has a fat cap, lined with that gristle I was talking about before. Unlike tougher gristles, the piece that comes with a striploin is adjacent to the fat, which means that you're not getting a crazy large gob of it somewhere in the middle of the meat. If you're the type to cut the fat off your steak, don't order this cut. And stop reading my blog. You're a horrible person.

Sirloin - Of the cuts listed so far, top sirloin and sirloin tip are the two most inexpensive. They can also be the most flavourful, but also is the least tender. I wouldn't ever eat a sirloin that was more than medium rare. This is the cut of choice for "steak dishes" like surf and turf or Steak Oscar. The quality of the meat IS good enough to stand on it's own, but if you're going to drown a steak in hollandaise, this is the one you want to do it with.

 Flank or Skirt steak - These are the most inherently flavourful cuts, but this is because they are from 
the hardest working, and therefore "toughest" cuts of beef. You don't want to eat this as a steak, rather, you should be cutting this thinly across the grain, marinating for long periods, and stirfrying it quickly over high heat. If you must cut it at the table, then it's low and slow braising, and probably served with a chimichurri of some kind (I prefer using lime juice rather than wine vinegar). But that's not really my wheelhouse.

 (SIDE NOTE: T-bone steaks are a special case. They are a bone in cut of meat that include a tenderloin and a striploin portion, and are largely for macho-men and fence sitters. I don't think too highly of T-bones, because you should really decide what you want from a steak and focus on that. Also, the bone adds complexity in the cooking phase that I don't really want to have to deal with. In the US, extra thick T-bones are known as Porterhouse Steaks, which are essentially a whole cow on a plate and if you order one of these monstrosities, you are either a remorseless eating machine or you're overcompensating for something. The name can be confusing to people in certain Commonwealth countries where a "Porterhouse" is a colloquial name for striploins.)

Wow. That's a lot of meat. Once you've decided on your cut, you can optionally decide to marinade. Good marinades will have something to enhance the flavour of the meat, like rosemary, mustard or galangal (my favourite). Also, alcohol can help to break down muscle fibres (red wine, beer or even hard liquors), and garlic is always good for everything. Salt and pepper are key. Salt will help pull moisture from the meat during the cooking process, and pepper is a natural tenderizer. Add anything else you like your meat to taste like. I've arranged the list of steaks above in order of tenderness, so tenderloins will require much less "marination" than skirts or flanks. You can get away with marinating a Rib steak for an hour (if at all), but a flank steak should spend at least a day submerged.

After you've decided if marinating is right for you, it's important to remember that steak should be at room temperature before you cook it. If it's colder than room temperature, you will find it's really difficult to get the steak a nice even medium rare. Take it out of the fridge about an hour before cooking and you'll be golden.

From here there are the two main methods of cooking steak, as I mentioned above: grilling or sear-and-broil.

 Grilling is just what it sounds like. Cooking over an open flame or charcoal. Charcoal is finicky, but will impart more of those delicious maillard flavour compounds. In either case, the principle is the same, get the grill screaming hot, then flop the steak down. Flip it once halfway through, and you're pretty much done. Cooking times will vary depending on how thick the cut is, how you like your steak and how hot your grill is. For a 1-inch steak at room temperature, follow this chart: Blue: 1 min a side Rare: 2 mins a side Med-Rare: 4 mins a side Medium: 6 mins a side Med-well: 8 mins a side Well done: who cares? If you're cooking it this long, you don't really like food, do you? Halfway into each sides' cooking time, you can give the steak just less than a quarter turn, and this will give it the nice diamond shaped cross hatching you see in Keg commercials.  Excellent if you're trying to impress someone, AND serving the steak whole.  Pull it off the grill, onto a warm plate and LET IT REST for 5-8 mins (under tented foil, if you wanna get really Jamie Oliver) before you serve. If you cut into it right away, it'll leak it's juices, and you'll have wasted a good piece of steak and about two hours of my typing.  Let it rest.

Sear-And-Broil is just what it sounds like. Set your oven to broil, and put your cast iron pan in it to heat. Did I mention to get a good oven mitt? Pat the meat dry and brush off any bits of spice or garlic and brush with a thin layer of oil with a high smoke point. I use Grapeseed, but canola, sunflower or veggie oil will do.  Olive oil is the worst, and leaves a shitty taste when it burns. Once the oven is at full temp, turn your largest burner to high heat, and take the pan out of the oven and onto the burner. Sear your steak for about a minute per side and throw it back into the oven. The broiling times are the same as the cooking times, but without flipping, so for medium-rare, you'll want to leave it in for 8 mins. Again, once you take it out of the pan, you should tent it with foil on a warm plate and let it rest.

Keep in mind that you don't have to have one whole steak per person... if amount of food or cost is an issue, after the meat has rested, you can slice it before plating, and dish it out that way.  This allows you to present it however you'd like and gives more room for sides and creativity with plating.  Keep in mind that most steaks are at least 6oz, and Health Canada Dietary Guidelines say that you should be eating only 2-3 servings of meat, at 4oz a piece.  Splitting an 8oz steak is perfectly reasonable, and you should really be eating more veggies than a giant hunk of red meat anyway.  However, food culture being what it is in North America, everyone usually gets their own, cooked to order.  And there's nothing wrong with that now and again, is there?

Typically, steak pairs best with mushrooms, but I know a lot of you are sissies who "don't like the texture" so you can serve whatever veg you like. I prefer fries to mashed with steak, but then again, fries are pretty much my favourite food, so what does that say about me? Furthermore, what does it say about you that you're reading a food post from a guy whose favourite food is fried potatoes?

Addendum: I saw an intriguing video on the internet that advocated an inversion of the traditional sear-and-broil method as detailed above. In this bake-and-sear method, you bake the steak at low temp (225F) for as long as it takes to get the steak up to an internal temperature of 145F (med-rare), between 45-60 mins. After it comes out of the oven, let it rest for 5-8 mins, then sear it at high heat on the cooktop on a pre-heated pan for a minute a side. This method is definitely unconventional but it offers a few benefits over the traditional sear-and-broil method: 1) the pre-resting means that the steak is ready to serve immediately 2) baking the meat first means that it will be less moist on the surface, allowing more charring to happen when it's seared 3) because the baking is done at low temperatures, the meat will be more even temperatured throughout, so that there will be more pink medium rare goodness and not the concentric rings of varying layers of doneness as in traditional cooking. Also, because it's not dependent on cast iron pans, you can do a lot of steak at once in a good convection oven, and I think that it's possible to finish them on a grill rather than a cooktop, again for mass, but also to get those nice grill marks that you see on TV. So I guess I'll try that the next time I do steak and I'll let you know.

Finally, if any of you have your own steak secrets or pairings, I'd love to hear them in the comments.  In fact, I'd love to hear your comments on any post I do.  Hint, hint!

 

Wood For Sheep: Goa

Goa is another one of my medium weight favourites.  There's so much going on in it, and even though it's a perfectly good 2 or 3 player game, it's really a game that's best with four.

The game is split into two halves, with the same structure: four rounds, each with an auction round, followed by an action round. 

In the auction round, players mark resources on the 5x5 area on the main board (typically spice plantations, but also single use spices, ships, power cards, colonists or even extra actions for use in the action round) on the shared board, and then auction them off to the table at large, in a single pass.  That is, you get one chance to bid on each lot, with the auctioneer of each lot getting the last chance to outbid the current high bid.   When players buy their own lots, the money goes into the supply, and out of the economy... making the remaining cash left on the table more valuable.  If a player buys someone elses lot, money changes hands immediately, so it's possible for an early auctioneer to sell for a lot of money, and to then leverage it against later rounds of bidding.  This auction style also means that it's possible for one player to win several lots, and for players to possibly miss out on gaining resources.

 In the action round, players take turns executing 3 actions, using "extra actions" if they've acquired them along the way.  Each of the first actions corresponds to one of the columns, from left to right, players acquire more ships, spices, money, cards, or colonies.  The last action is to spend spices and ships (ostensibly moving a load of spices back to Portugal for glory or whatever), in order to increase the effectiveness of one of the other actions, and to gain victory points.  For example, this player has spent no spices on ships, as his cube is at the top of the "ships" column on the far left, but his "spices" column (next to ships) is all the way down at the bottom.  If you level up all your abilities same rate, you can earn extra action cards, and the first player to make it to each of the boxes in the bottom two rows will earn a power card.  These two mechanics give incentive for the player to either generalize or specialize respectively, and encourage differing strategies over multiple playthroughs.

There is a fair amount of randomness in the game, in the layout of resource tiles for auction and the power card deck.  However, the randomness doesn't cause imbalance in the game and good planning and measured decisions will beat lucky card draws 9 times out of ten. The auction lends a lot of player based tension in a game that can otherwise play like multiplayer solitaire.  Ultimately, this game is mostly about efficiency and economy... how well you can influence the in game economy and spend your resources for maximum effect. The "RPG" element of leveling up your abilities was fairly unique for this type of game (i.e. non-dungeon crawlers) at the time it was originally published, and it a major draw for the  min/maxers among us.

Overall, it's a great game with a lot of interesting mechanics that dovetail very nicely with one another and every serious boardgamer should give it at least a play or two.

The new console war

About this time last year, I met up with a childhood friend who had been instrumental in my development as a gamer.  We played console games, table top games (including an RPG that he made up), and even arcade games together (yes, I'm that old).  He lives in Asia now, so when he asked me to grab him an XBONE for him, as they wouldn't be released for several more months, of course I agreed.

Right about the same time, I got myself a PS Vita and a PS plus membership and was really impressed at the selection of games that were available, and I was excited about the prospect of immersing myself in the PlayStation ecosystem much like so many of the Apple faithful adorn themselves with iGadgets because "everything is so integrated."  This is a bit out of character for me, as many of you know, I'm platform-agnostic.  That is, I play games on whatever platform suits the game best.

For example, in the last generation, FPS, and driving games were played on my X360.  Fighting games, JRPGs, and character action games were for PS3.  RTS, or western RPGs were squarely in the PC camp (although all these lines blurred as Steam became more prominent in the past five years). Each type of games, in my opinion, suit the controllers of those respective platforms.  Wii was a special case, of course.  If you want to play a Mario, Zelda or Metroid game, or if you wanted to play a game with your mom, then it was all Wii, all the time.

But I digress.  PS4 was what I had my sights set on.  PS plus for all three systems, and the concept of remote play seemed like I would be living in some kind of futuristic fever dream.  Consider, too, where we were at that time.  PS4 had "won" E3, and was cheaper to boot.  XBONE was more expensive, was saddled with Kinect, and the flagship title was deeply flawed. At the beginning of a new console generation, before the libraries fill out, the game dev cycle matures and the initial round of price cuts happens, even a fence sitter like me can only get one system.  But when my friend found out that I planned to get a PS4 even as we were playing Forza 5, his disappointment was plain as day.

Now, we're both (relatively) grown men, and I didn't think that this revelation would affect our relationship adversely, but this exchange was enlightening to a degree.  Until that moment, console loyalty was the province of internet trolls and teenaged COD fans who need to feel as though their tribe was the one worth belonging to.  It wasn't until a guy that I respected deeply cast his flag that I realized how truly powerful brand loyalty is.  Last generation, he played on X360, so his vote was already decided.

I guess this sense of modern-day tribalism doesn't make sense to me so much as the need to belong.  I get that.  We all want to feel like we're a part of something bigger than ourselves, and this can extend to the things we like and spend our free time and money on.  But that loyalty doesn't extend both ways.  Microsoft doesn't feel like it owes my friend anything any more than Sony does me.  Or Blizzard those poor, poor souls who play WoW or Hearthstone.  Do you think that Apple cares for its loyal customers any more or less than Samsung?  Of course not. But that doesn't mean that we won't defend our chosen platforms against those who decry it.

As for my "next gen" console choice... well, lets just say that 2014 was a complicated year for gamers, both inside and outside this so called "console war."  It's a much narrower decision for the gamer with only enough money to support one console.  After a year, PS plus has lost a bit of it's shine, and XBOX has made strides to close the gap.  So which system did I end up getting?

Wii U.

Bur Bur Cha Cha Time!

 Well, it's been a while since I've posted, sorry for making all three of you wait.  I've been struggling with how these posts have been turning out, and haven't really liked the direction that it's been headed, but the Cooking Time! posts and the Wood For Sheep posts are definitely more popular than the other material I've been putting on here.  So I've been doing some thinking about the way that I wanted my videogame posts to go, and realizing that I'm not happy doing editorial, considering that there are about a thousand outlets that are putting out analysis that I feel like I'm retreading.  

Yes, yes, I have a unique voice and we're all snowflakes.  But what makes us unique is our experiences with the same games, right?  So having said that, consider this hiatus over, and expect to see more experiential pieces and less head up my ass gamer elitism pieces.  And with that...

*        *       *

With the passing of the holidays, winter is well and truly upon us.  Granted, the south coast of BC isn't exactly known for it's harsh winters, but it's a different kind of cold than most people associate with the rest of the Great White North.  Here, a mere five below can soak through your clothes, and chill you to the bone.  It sucks.  

Here's a little recipe from one of the hottest climates in the world, my parent's home country of Malaysia!  Yes, nothing like a hot dessert from southeast Asia to warm the cockles on a chilly winter night! Oh, and for those who aren't used to Malaysian mangling of the latin alphabet, it's pronounced "Boo boo cha cha," they're a former British colony, so I guess the "r's" are silent?

You will need:

-Taro Root

-Yam and/or Sweet Potato

-Sugar

-Water

-Coconut Milk

-Pearl Tapioca (NOT pearl barley)

I use about the amount of root shown here:

Peel them and cut them up into 1-inch pieces roughly (I hate the term bite-sized, because not only do people have different sized mouths, they take different sized bites).

Once everything has been cut up, put the yams into boiling water, just a little more than what you'd need to cover it (you can add water later if you need to).  This will form the base of the broth.  Boil for about ten minutes, then add the taro.

While you are doing this, take about 3/4 cup of the tapioca, and boil it separately for about ten minutes.  It will go from being white, to being mostly translucent like this:

Once it's at this point, drain it, and soak in cold water.

About 10-15 mins after adding the taro, all the roots should be approaching fork tender (similar to boiled potatoes).  Add a can of coconut milk, and add about a 1/4 cup sugar.  Dissolve the sugar, add the tapioca and boil for another 2-3 mins before removing from heat.

You can serve hot or cold, but I think that it's best served immediately.  It should look something like this stock photo I pulled off the internet after I realized that I ate all of ours before taking a picture of the finished product.  No one ever accused me of being professional.

The Alpha and The Omega

One of my friends shocked pretty much everyone on his Facebook feed when he admitted that he was not going to get the "new" Pokemon game.  For those of you who don't know Cory, he is basically a real life Pokemon Trainer.

His mom kicked him out of the house when he was ten, he got into a lot of fights with other kids, and sometimes other adults.  Eventually, he took down a major crime syndicate while on his way to becoming the very best.

Okay, so that last paragraph wasn't true.  At all.  But he does like Pokemon an awful lot; just check out his DS collection... he has one for each edition of the game that came out for that system (for those of you who aren't handheld gamers, it's like nine or something).  I also like Pokemon a lot.  It's an excellent game, whether you are the "target demographic" of eight-to-twelve year olds with power fantasies, or a gamer who's rapidly approaching middle age.  It's easy to understand, there are very few penalties for failure, yet there's a deep and rewarding endgame for those who want a nearly infinitely replayable game.  One of the greatest draws to this game is that you can set your own goals, whether it's to fill out your Pokedex (that's Poke-speak for nerd-catalogue) and "catch 'em all" as the commercials entreat, to beat the Elite Four and become League Champion, to build the perfect team and take all comers in battle, or to simply collect as many "shiny" Pokemon as you can.

Not long after I met Cory, Nintendo released a remake of the second game in the series for DS, Heart Gold/Soul Silver.  I think it was part of how we bonded, because even if we didn't battle together, we sure had a lot of common ground to cover (even if a lot of it was me hassling him for buying the same system over and over).  I probably spent a total of 300-400 hours over the three DS pokemon games that I bought, and a lot of those hours were spent trading Pokemon WITH MYSELF.  Which makes it all the more puzzling as to why I'm not picking up the game either.

So what happened in the last four years?  Why would a game that's had it's friendly, approachable tentacles wrapped firmly around my free time fall so far from my personal good graces?

The fact is, while each release does introduce some changes to the basic formula, these changes are very incremental.  This game is only a little different from Pokemon X/Y, which came out last year, and it's a remake of a ten year old game, to boot.  X/Y was the same minor step forward for the series, as was Black2/White2 before it and Black/White before that.  Simply put, it's the same reason that Call Of Duty or Assassin's Creed sales have been flagging year over year, and it's the same reason that next years Batman: Arkham Whatever game will also be lukewarm.

Games are a business, and when it comes to games with big budgets, no one is willing to take the risks that they should take in order to make the form progress.  The only ones who will take those risks are the devs with the least to lose: the independent developers, and this works the same way as indie movies.  For every indie darling like Gone Home (which everyone, gamer or no, should play) or Hotline Miami, there are literally thousands that will fail to make back even the cost to develop.


Pokemon is kind of the exact opposite of an indie game, though, and realistically, the market for the next game in the series is still in diapers.  For the rest of us, six generations of the same gameplay is beginning to wear.  Sometimes, becoming the very best is just not enough.

Garlic Time!

 Ahhh... Garlic...  Look at it.  It's like a seed from the gods, isn't it.  So much potential, so much flavour.  Bust open the head, and pull out a clove or two, I'm going to show you how to get the most out of your garlic.

 Place the side of a wide knife over the top of the clove, and give the top of the knife a sharp blow with the heel of your palm.

 Pull the peel off and slice them to about 2-3 mms wide.

 Turn them around, and mince them finely, and salt the garlic with a coarse grind.

 Now take the side of your blade and pull it across the garlic in sections, crushing it down into the board.  You should feel the salt grinding the garlic through your knife.

 By the end of it, the garlic should look like this:

Now you can use it like this in stirfrys, sauces, whatever. The crushing activates an enzyme in the garlic that gives it a distictive taste, and added garlicky goodness.

If you have fresh or dried herbs, chop them up, and press them into the garlic, too.  Works great for marinades, curries, stirfries, anything slow cooked.  You can do this for salad dressings, but if the fresh garlic seems too harsh, let it sit in the acid of your dressing for at least a day or two to make it more mellow.  Anytime a recipe calls for a clove of garlic, if  you can take the time to do this, it will always taste better.  Always.