That guy's a Maniac...

How does the Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl Tower Master Ribbon Actually Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:18:00 +0100

Evening maniacs, it's been a hot minute but I thought I'd quickly post this as none of the FAQs, Reddit posts or even Bulbapedia or Serebii.net are really clear on how it works or are frustratingly vague or just plain ol' wrong. I've just earned the Tower Master Ribbon on my original Pokémon Diamond Rampardos in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, a mere five years after the game's release as part of this stupid mission. Now let's get into it step by step.

If You Can, Get This Ribbon In Sword or Shield

The Tower Master Ribbon was introduced in the Generation 8 switch games and is not the same as any of the tower ribbons you can earn in any of the previous games, including the original Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl which offered six different battle tower ribbons based on the mode. The Tower Master Ribbon is far easier to get in Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield by beating Leon in a Master Rank match and repeat battles against him will earn new copies of this ribbon. The only reason to go for it in BD/SP is if you don't own Sword and Shield or most likely because you are trying to obtain it on one of the Pokémon in the first 493 of the National Pokédex that didn't make the Dexit cut. Pokémon from 493 onwards can't be moved into BD/SP so if it's not in the Sword Shield dex or BD/SP then unfortunately it can't get this ribbon (although note that some Pokémon species which get a new evolution in later games can earn this ribbon before they evolve, so if you love, for example Wyrdeer, Farigiraf or even Hisuian Typhlosion, hold off evolving it, wash it through the BD/SP Battle Tower and then evolve it in the later game).

How to Get the Tower Master Ribbon

Fair warning, this is a real slog and the second hardest thing to achieve in these games*. In order to earn this ribbon, first you need to unlock the Master rank challenge in either Singles or Doubles. To do this, you need to get a continuous win streak of 49 or more and beat the Tower Tycoon in the 49th battle (you'll also face him at 21 battles) in the Battle Tower. If you lose one battle you have to start your streak over again. You can check your current streak by checking the PC next to the second nurse lady in the Battle Tower. You can check your all time record in the same place as well as on the back of your trainer card. Just beating this tower is no mean feat and you can find plenty of guides out there for team builds. Finally beating Palmer at battle 49 gets you nearer to the Tower Master Ribbon but sadly, you cannot earn the ribbon in the standard tier.

To Be A Master

Once you beat battle 49 without losing, you will unlock both the Single and Double Master Class. You don't have to get the 49 streak in both the regular tier types to unlock masters. Although the trainers you will fight in Master Class are more challenging, later battles you will regularly be facing legendary Pokémon, thankfully Master Class works slightly differently in that there are Ranks numbered from 1 to 10. Although you can get demoted from a rank, it is slightly more forgiving than one loss and you have to start the challenge all over again and/or hurl your Switch across the room. I'm not quite sure how the ranks work. In some ranks I could lose in a battle room and didn't lose a rank immediately if I recall correctly but for higher ranks it did seem like one loss busted you down a rank. Like the normal tier, you will face seven trainers in a row. If you beat all seven trainers, you will move up to the next rank. If you lose against any of these, you have to exit out of the room and start another 7 battle challenge at your rank and may go down a rank. So if you are rank one, you beat the first room of seven trainers and you will go up to rank 2 and so on.

You will need to make your way up to rank 10 and then the seventh battle in the Rank 10 room will be Tower Tycoon Palmer (or Tower Tycoon Palmer and his son, your rival, in Double Master Class). Every member on your tower team- three in singles, four in doubles will receive the ribbon, even if they didn't appear on the field in the final fight. To earn the ribbon on more Pokémon, you need to beat another seven battle room in a row at Rank 10. Basically, beating Palmer at Rank 10 is how you earn this medal. The downsides: if you lose you'll be busted down to rank 9, meaning you'll have to fight another 14 battles to get a shot at the Tower Tycoon. Up until battle five of a seven battle set you can take a break after each battle and change out your team. The nurse attending you will heal up your team after every win and will give you the option to continue, take a break or quit. If you take a break you can go and change out your team and items etc. and then come back. However, you can't change your team after battle four ("until you battle the fifth Trainer, you can take a break during the challenge to step out of the Battle Room and reselect your Pokémon") and if you quit out at this stage, you will also likely lose a rank. I got to the seventh battle of rank 10, chose to quit and was instantly demoted to Rank 9. You do not need to win every battle in every rank in one continuous streak to get this medal. On my run I lost a number of times getting to rank 10, for example my highest streak was 41 wins in a row. I earned the medal on a 14 win streak.

The best strategy for earning this ribbon with your favourite Pokémon, if your favourite is not especially strong is to build a strong team for the Tower and then swap in your target Pokémon in at the last possible moment and hope you can cheese it with the rest of your team carrying the deadwood. I'm not 100% sure if you can swap it in before battle five in Master Rank 10 so I did the last set of seven battles with the one I wanted to get the ribbon on. This is also why I chose to get this ribbon through the master double battle tower as that way three of your strong Pokémon can carry the fourth. In singles, your target Pokémon makes up a third of your team so a bit riskier if you end up having to put them on the field. Alternatively, you could try putting more than one Pokémon you want the ribbon on through the last seven battles but, and I can't stress this enough, these trainers have difficult teams by the end you regularly see the legendary birds, the legendary dogs, cresselia, heatran and the regis and often more than one in a team. I think a loss at rank 10 always busts you down to rank 9 so you then have to slog through another 14 battles again (seven to get back to rank 10 and then seven in rank 10 to face Palmer) so it might be more efficient in the long run to have your stronger team carry one Pokémon at a time just in case a weather condition, ability quirk, crit or unexpected priority move messes up your strategy.

I hope this helps some folk out there, I couldn't find the precise conditions of how you get this ribbon and how you get repeat ribbons on the rest of your team in the BDSP Battle Tower so I hope it is a bit clearer. If you do find this post and still have a question or clarification then do ask and I'll see if I can answer or road test it. I've got at least a dozen of my subviable favourites/legacies and high ribbon count Pokémon to put through the Tower so I'll be hitting it at rank 10 and rank 9 often enough in the future.

In the meantime, here's my OG Rampardos now as 'ribbon complete' as I can currently get it up to Pokémon Scarlet/Violet (I missed quite a few ribbons back in the day but wanted to stick with my original guy for sentimental reasons rather than run a new one from the old games all the way through). Fun fact you can earn a special certificate in BDSP for bringing Pokémon from the OG Diamond and Pearl into the game as an extra fun thing if you're a vintage player.

* The hardest thing to do in these games is to earn a black trainer card which requires, amongst some other easier requirements, a 100 win streak in the Battle Tower. Honestly, I know Nintendo kinda cringingly still puts out press pretending that bragging rights is a thing but I think this is one area where it is absolutely warranted.

TGAM The Podcast: Oranguru- 2025 Looking Back, Looking Forward Episode

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:31:00 GMT

It’s That Guy’s A Maniac Looking Back, Looking Forward episode. We take the turning over of the year as the opportunity to look back at our video game predictions and resolutions from 2025 and then look forward to new games and beating old ones in 2026. Did we predict the Switch 2? Did the GPS Kingdom Hearts come out? Why were we playing darts with our 19 year-old girlfriend instead of solving MURDERS? Click through, look back, look forward.

TGAM The Podcast: Duosion (Xmas Estival Edition) & TGAM 2025 Video Game Christmas Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:28:00 GMT

It’s the end of year Estival celebration and we’ve got a jam-packed show! We’ve got 36 video game-themed Christmas cracker jokes, we’ve got a brutal half-time Chrono Trigger round of That Guy’s a Mastermind and if that wasn’t enough it’s the 2025 TGAM Video Game Christmas Awards. Find out who scoops the wins in our six unique categories.

TGAM The Podcast: Herdier (secretely What Are Ya Playin')

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:26:00 GMT

This week is dog pokémon, Herdier. Which we talk about for five seconds before a good old fashioned What Are You Playing? Richie’s delved back into Baldur’s Gate 3 and tried their hand at Balatro. Cunzy has been on a voyage of discovery with Kirby Star Allies and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.

TGAM The Podcast: Mantyke

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:23:00 GMT

We re-talk about Hello Kitty being a British Schoolgirl, the symbiosis between jellycat and penguins and the pokemon Mantyke. Richie takes on Metal Kart 3 for the SNES in That Guy’s A Miltank. We then try to remember anything about video games.

TGAM The Podcast: Oddish

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:21:00 GMT

Turnips, j k rowling spoiling super mario bros 2, sexual dimorphism and what do Swedes call swedes?

TGAM The Podcast: Gogoat

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:19:00 GMT

This week, we try to make sense of the goat phenomenon. We're comparing the villagers of Animal Crossing to the outright chaos of Goat Simulator and the dark comedy of Cult of the Lamb. We'll also debate some classic gaming mysteries: Which goat has the highest HP? And, most importantly, does a GTA car count as a 'mount' in the purest sense of gaming taxonomy? Tune in for the answers you didn't know you needed.

TGAM The Podcast: Mankey

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:16:00 GMT

We talk mankey, monkeys, angry monkeys, Primeape, Annihilape, etymology, getting angry, anime, TCG cards and peek, everyone is a Garchomp, Tomb Raider, pigs and monkeys in games- pigs and monkeys in starfox, there are no pigs in Resident Evil, super monkey ball, monkey from timesplitters, monkeys in minecraft, pig cops in Duke Nukem.

TGAM The Podcast: Klinklang

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:14:00 GMT

This week we have never really looked at Klingklang. Is it a wheel? How many gears are there? Where is the face? Cunzy1 1 tests his knowledge of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and the maniacs talk gear in games. Gear gating, cosmetics and the realistic Chariot based Gran Turismo game we never knew we needed.

TGAM The Podcast: Palossand/Halloween

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 2 Jan 2026 13:12:00 GMT

We talk haunted castles this week. Sand castles. Pokémon sand castles. Can Richie be this week’s maniac with questions about Ghost Master(mind) and we talk in ever decreasing circles about horror in movies, horror in games and classifications thereof. Spooooky or wot?

TGAM The Podcast: Horsea

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 12:00:00 GMT

It’s Horsea folks! But not really. We quickly get too excited to talk about our first impressions of Pokémon Legends ZA (mild spoiler warning) and then take a bit of an odd tangent talking about male pregnancy in video games and we add our first items onto the TGAM scale of sadbad.

TGAM The Podcast: Hypno

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:52:00 +0100

This week les maniacs are all about that wooden hill y’all. Yes we’re talking about sleep, the pokémon Hypno, tapirs, whether hypnosis is real or not, Pokémon Sleep and ummmm Silent Hill?

Under the jump bonus content! You can sleep when you're dead punk.

TGAM The Podcast: Hariyama

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:19:00 +0100

We’ll be honest readers. We didn’t keep good notes. Apparently this episode includes: sumo, Marvel, Sad Sack (Raggy Dolls), the bible, Ganryu and echidna, Smash bros lore and punching bag, NERF arena Blast, sand bags (more generally) and then most cryptically: brine.

The best bit is, we have a template to record good notes as we record. Frequently, it is BLANK.

TGAM The Podcast Season 6 Launch: Bulbasaur

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Thu, 2 Oct 2025 18:40:00 +0100

Who’s that Podcast? It’s TGAM the Podcast! We’re back for Season Six. We’ve got new games. There’s a new gimmick. Cunzy is our first That Guy’s a Mastermind™ contestant. This week we talk about the Pom Poko suit from Super Mario, snails, first partner Pokémon, frogs in video games and what would the Final Fantasy VII characters be if they were D&D classes.

Bonus content for those under the jump. Will Cunzy1 1 remember to update the blog with every episode of this series? Or will we blindly hope you just go straight to Spotify. All bets are on! Listen to this ya punks

TGAM: The Podcast Macab:RE

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 15:27:00 GMT

Bump in the night! Ooooh a skellington with a spiderweb pumpkin. Scary stuff. This week the maniacs talk about video game fears IN THE REAL WORLD. Find out what fears grips the maniacs in the wee hours. Where is it not safe to save?

Right after we recorded this, I faced my fears and I saved outside of Cafe Ultimo! Who dares wins folks. Who dares wins.

OPERATION LAST BUS HOME DIARIES: Pokémon Diamond

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 10:21:00 GMT

It's been... how shall we say? A hot minute since I last gave an update on my mission to empty out all of the legendary pokémon, special pokémon available from in game trades from NPCs and events and get all these guys with as many ribbons as possible from the Pokémon games going all the way back to 2002's Pokémon Sapphire all the way through to Pokémon Violet. The rules of the challenge are here and progress to date from Pokémon Fire Red, Pokémon Colosseum, Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness, Third generation spinoffs and lastly Pokémon Sapphire can be found in the respective hyperlinks. Or for convenience you can find the whole series here. Corners have been cut. Sanity has been tested. I've spent the last eight months sort of and sort of not trying to evacuate the hell out of my copy of Pokémon Diamond, the first mainline pokémon game on the Nintendo DS. Why has it taken so long? What's the hold up? What state did I leave the game in first time around? Listen on to find out intrepid adventurer.

Our sixth entry in this series is the first and once again, definitely not last, time we visit the Sinnoh region. Although we were lucky enough to live through when these games were coming out it's easy to forget and easier to over simplify in hindsight the generational improvements that each mainline Pokémon game brought to the table at the time of release. Pokémon Diamond, Pokémon Pearl and it's 'third' Pokémon Platinum heralded the beginning of the fourth generation of Pokémon games. This generation added pokémon 387-493, from earth turtle Turtwig to GOD OF ALL CREATION Arceus. The new Nintendo DS was the perfect machine for some new gimmicks- the bottom screen of the DS brought us the Pokétch suite of apps- some useful, some utterly pointless. These games took the game to game interactions from cable and that weird GBA plugin thing that came with Fire Red and found their natural home over Wi-Fi for minigames, flag hunting, Wi-Fi Plaza, battling and trading in particular the Global Trade Station (GTS). Unbelievably this was also the generation in which a staple of battling since, physical and special moves, was first introduced. All pokémon moves were given a type either physical attack, special attack or status clearing up some of the confusion over 'physical' and 'special moves' previously. Contests were improved and love it or hate it, the sprawling Sinnoh beneath gave players the opportunity to spelunk to their hearts content. Anyway, precious memories but GET TO THE CHOPPER!

LOCATION: Sinnoh Region (first time around)

SITREP: Pokédex: 491/493 (still no Deoxys and no Darkrai) Playtime: 478 hours. Money: I didn't leave this game in too dire a state $719021. Items: Again a decent selection all things considered with pretty much all in game held items, most of the one and done TMs, berries and a healthy stock of pokéballs. In game team: I'd pretty much cleaned out thanks to the large number of DS Pokémon games each demanding the pokédex get filled. Of note were a lvl 59 Bibarel (the OG Bibarel caught as a level 3 bidoof on July the 31st 2007 four days after launch in Europe!) with Surf, Cut, Rock Climb and Strength and a Staravia on flight deck duty.

OBJECTIVE 1: Diamond and Pearl had a frankly silly number of Legendary and Mythical Pokémon. On a normal run of the game, players would have the chance to catch the relevant box legend, in my case Dialga,the three lake nephews; Huey, Dewy and Louis. Then, when the game significantly opens up after you beat the Sinnoh Elite Four and complete the Sinnoh Pokédex, one can gain access to Heatran, Giratina and Cresselia. With the regis from Pokémon Sapphire, Regigigas is also catchable here. There were five event Pokémon- Arceus, Shaymin and Darkrai were accessed by getting event only items and Manaphy and Phione were a neat gift accessed with data from Pokémon Ranger. More on those later.

OBJECTIVE 2: Just four in-game trades in Diamond, Pearl and Platinum: an Abra, Chatot, Haunter and a Magikarp. Interestingly, some... decisions were made by the dev team with these trades. Firstly, the Haunter who you get for a Medicham crushingly has an everstone as held item meaning, you'll have to trade it again without this item to evolve it into a Gengar. I guess it teaches you about asshole trades, useful in the generation that introduced the GTS. In English language versions of DPP, the Abra, Chatot and Haunter have a very hidden extra bonus in that they are treated by the game as being traded from a Japanese version in the game granting exp gaining bonus and the foreign trade benefit for the Masuda method of breeding. The Magikarp is treated as German in origin in all but German versions of the game where it also has Japanese origin. Another barely noticeable benefit is that the Chatot you can get already has some boosts in its competition stats.

The differences between Norton's Charap from Pokémon Diamond (left) and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond (right).

OBJECTIVE 3: Following in Pokémon Sapphire's footsteps, there are a whopping 39 ribbons available in this game, 38 of which are newly introduced. There're another 20 contest ribbons, 7 daily ribbons, the footprint ribbon, the Sinnoh champion ribbon, six battle tower ribbons and the three expensive ribbons which can be bought from the ribbon society.

Legends On The Loose

Digging through my own personal Pokémultiverse I managed to locate all of the OG legendaries from my copy of Pokémon Diamond with the notable exception of my original Dialga. Somewhat heartbroken, I'm not sure what happened here but let me tell you listeners, before legendary and mythical Pokémon were dished out like candy, you got your one box legendary per game and in order to fill out pokédexes you'd have to enter into shady deals to fill in the gaps. Although I am deeply disappointed my OG Dialga is out there somewhere, I can only imagine I pulled the trigger on a trade to get an otherwise unobtainable to me Palkia.

Insider Trading

Also oddly, I'd missed all but the Chatot trade in my original run. Fortunately, none of the Pokémon needed for the trades were particularly arduous or item-requiring to acquire and in no time at all Hilary's Abra called Kazza, Mindy's Haunter called Gaspar and Meister's Magikarp, Foppa were mine and on their way outta dodge.

Ribbon Me This

Fortunately, the remakes of these games and some of the other DS and 3DS games make some of the ribbons first introduced here available again so there's no real pressure to scoop all of these up on the way through. I made the effort to get the footprint ribbon here for as many Pokémon as I could as in Diamond it is given simply when a Pokémon has maximum friendship, in later games it's given for a Pokémon gaining a certain number of levels after it was caught, however, if you're not careful you can lock yourself out of getting the ribbon for Pokémon already too high a level to get the level gain, not to mention the weirdness around 'voiceless' Pokémon. Safer to do it here for my merry band. As I mentioned in the Sapphire post, aside from bragging rights, and if you have them all then please brag away, I'd decided I didn't need to get every single contest and battle ribbon as in the sixth generation games these are all condensed down into just one battle memory or contest memory ribbon the only difference between spending weeks and months grinding out all the battle and contest ribbons is the memory ribbons are a different colour. I did need at least one contest and battle tower ribbon on every Pokémon before leaving this game, however. Getting at least one contest ribbon for each Pokémon was easy enough, the contests in Diamond involve a slightly bizarre dressing up game and dancing minigame as well as the move based version.

Battle Tower Bother

The biggest block here and why dear listeners I'm still stuck on bloody diamond is the battle tower ribbons. As I've mentioned previously 'beating' the battle towers to earn the various commemorative ribbons is one of the most difficult tasks to do in almost every Pokémon game (the exception is Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield which is trivially easy). In Diamond, there are six battle tower ribbons available- one for winning 21 single battles without losing, one for 49 single battles, one for 50 double battles, one for 50 multibattles with an NPC, one for 50 multibattles with a friend and one for ranking 5th place of higher on WiFi battles. This last ribbon hasn't been available for quite some time (and in fact a tiny, tiny detail in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet acknowledges this by granting you the gold coloured Battle Memory ribbon if you have 7/8 of the Sapphire and Diamond battle tower ribbons).

Unlike Pokémon Sapphire, Pokémon Diamond is a little bit more forgiving on the level scaling front for these challenges, however each run starts off easy and quickly gets challenging, every attempt completely resetting with a single loss. Getting any of these ribbons is difficult enough with an highly invested custom team with decent coverages and synergies. Doing so with (checks notes) not-at-all optimised, do not have time to EV train Pokémon like Dunsparce, Xatu and Lumineon just wasn't going to happen. All I need for the battle memory ribbon in later games is just one battle tower ribbon so I aimed to try to clear the 21 single battles. In order to carry some of the weaker 'mon I put some effort into making two very very cheap killers to try to carry a third Pokémon. Step up Metagross and Salamence. However, they still weren't optimised as I'd blitzed through many of the one use decent TMs and didn't quite have the full range of items I'd like. I then kept throwing myself at the single battle tower run. At the time of writing I've only managed to get four Pokémon through to earn the ribbon- that pain in the ass Raikou, that abandoned Muk from XD and old friends MS. NIDO and MIMIEN. Getting to the 21st battle is tedious but not too challenging. It's the last battle that's killed off many of my runs. In order to get the easiest of the Diamond and Sapphire battle ribbons you have to beat Barry's Father, Tower Tycoon Palmer and his team is a shitty scummy cheaty bastard one. He has Dragonite, Milotic and Rhyperior and brings them out in a random order. Depending on the order, Metagross and Salamence can hold their own but when it's a Corsola called COROSO or a Delcatty called SKITIT who's the ace in the back... well. I've still got 49 of the fuckers to get through this gauntlet and to breeze through extremely ribbon light Pokémon Soulsilver, Pokémon White and Pokémon Black 2 with one or two spinoff sidequests too... I'll see you when I get there. IF I ever get there.

TGAM: The Podcast RE:Member Remember

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:26:00 GMT

This week the maniacs continue their tirade of coming up with foolproof ways to remember all the type match ups from Pokémon. This weeks contenders are Ice, Fighting and Poison types… and these ones have a lot of unpacking to do.Secret bit. We had to cut about half an hour of this podcast out because one of the non-Cunzy hosts had a whole get-yourself-to-a-therapist string of takes about Ice types that we couldn't get past the censor. I mean, quite rightly couldn't get it past the censor. Horrible depraved stuff.

TGAM: The Podcast RE:Member

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:19:00 GMT

This week the maniacs have a hot shot Character, Item, Level and then revel, in coming up with fool proof ways to remember all the type match ups from Pokémon. Is your Dad normal type? Familiarise yourself with the elemental triangle (and grass). And does thinking about bugs filled with dry grass really help? Listen to find out all this and morelull.

Secret bit here. What's the worst type your Dad could be if they aren't normal? Dark? Bug? Psychic? In fact all of them are probably less desirable than a good ol' normal type Dad.

TGAM: The Podcast RE:Wind

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 19:40:00 GMT

One of the four elemental forces (arguably the worst one), this week we’re talking wind in video games. What is wind? We discuss wind as a force, farting in games, games where you play as the wind and a lot of talk about Pilotwings which may or may not have wind in it actually. Oh! We didn’t talk about Windwaker. I’ve only just remembered. Damn.

Here's the secret bit. Richie's favourite element is Tin.

TGAM The Podcast RE:tro

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Mon, 7 Oct 2024 22:07:00 +0100

In this week’s podcast, the maniacs take on the challenge of defining Retro Games. What is a retro game? Are there handy definitions that can be pinched from fashion,music or wider culture? Is it a console generation thing? Can it be defined technologically? Chronologically? They also pick the Definitive Top 3 Retro Games of All Time. May be some dog chat too.

Welcome to the bit Richie never reads. We didn't talk about joysticks. I think that's the defining line. We should divide the world of games into pre-joystick and post. Ever think about the word joypad? Joy pad. Joy. Pad. Joypad? Pad of joy.

TGAM The Podcast RE:Class

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Fri, 4 Oct 2024 09:30:00 +0100

The maniacs are in class this week. RE:Class. You know, religious education classes? No? Okay, well we talk religion in video games sort of and cover the thrilling topic of reclassing. Very exciting. There may also be some dog talking.

Fun fact I don't think Richie ever reads this bit below the jump so here's where I'll be leaking secret information to you the dedicated blog listener. If you listen very closely to this episode you can hear Richie looking for World of Warcraft trial codes. He's not out. He'll never be out.

TGAM The Podcast We'RE:Back

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Tue, 1 Oct 2024 20:07:00 +0100

We'RE:Back for the first episode of the fifth season of the TGAM Podcast! Will this be the season the maniacs don't neglect the blog despite directing everyone to it every episode? Well just between you and me listeners I'm already an episode behind! As ever we've got SEASON GIMMICKS including a bit that we're not sure if it works or not THE WHOLE SEASON. Just like old times (remember the office skit? Like that but worse!). We also debut new game Character, Item, Level to the world.

This season we’RE RE:Visiting, RE:Mixing, RE:Classing, RE:Troing. RE. The gimmick is RE words. Why? Because as songstress/actress Billy Piper once sang because we want to. Richie enters a new era post-WOW and it’s a weird one. Cunzy plays some indie games where you go right (and sometimes left). Enjoy!

TGAM The Podcast DS: Bonus Break Time!

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Thu, 7 Mar 2024 11:03:00 GMT

You thought the season was done but we've squeezed out a bonus episode for you. It's ALL BREAK TIME, ALL THE TIME. Hear Richie and Cunzy struggle to answer questions about any game released after 2001 from the Ultimate? Video Game Trivia card quiz.

TGAM The Podcast DS: Dice Score

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 16:14:00 GMT

In this episode the 'maniacs' talk about if the Koopalings are Bowser's children or not for too long and then eventually talk about board games which are video games and video games which are board games but not 'board games'. Are they good are they bad?

OPERATION LAST BUS HOME DIARIES: Pokémon Sapphire

noreply@blogger.com (Cunzy11) — Tue, 9 Jan 2024 23:41:00 GMT

We're hoovering up all the unique pokémon in the main series games going all the way back to Pokémon Sapphire. Here's the introduction to the series, clearing out Pokémon Fire Red, Pokémon Colosseum, Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness and most recently a quick pit stop review of the Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald grab-bag spinoff games with pokémon unlockable for the main games.

Our fifth entry in this blog series goes back to the earliest released game you can still transfer pokémon up from, 2002/2003's Pokémon Sapphire Version for the Game Boy Advance. As I explained in the Fire Red post, there's both a) lots to do and b) SOME SERIOUS ISSUES in Sapphire due to the age of my game cartridge so I was keen to clean up in all the other games in the third generation first and then end this generation in the OG game. Before I get into these trials and tribulations, however, an overview.

LOCATION: Hoenn region (first time around).

SITREP: Pokedex: 384/386 (no Celebi or Deoxys). Playtime: 409 hours. Money: $586023(!). Items: Some full heals all the flutes, a couple of STAB boosting held items, a lax incense and luckily a sun stone. In game team; a bunch of low level HM using pokes and what looks like a half-hearted attempt at starting to collect an in-game Hoenn dex (again).

OBJECTIVE 1: Pokémon Sapphire is relatively straight-forward when it comes to legendary pokémon. There's the box legendary, in Sapphire's case Kyogre, the original three regis, Rayquaza and the version exclusive of the eon pair, Latias. The other one of the Latias/Latios pair was available by obtaining an eon ticket by scanning an e-reader card or by mixing records with somebody who had it. Alas, being from the UK such a thing never made it here. Happily, all the legendaries under this OT were present and correct in HOME, I breathed a sigh of relief in particular for the Latias as it's another roaming 'mon *RAIKOU FLASHBACKS*.

OBJECTIVE 2: There are just three in-game trades in Pokémon Sapphire, Elyssa's Makuhita for a Slakoth, Darrell's Skitty for a Pikachu and Lane's Corsola for a Bellossom. I'd actually already swung through Sapphire to check trades for when I was doing the 100 battle challenge in XD. I'd already traded and evolved the Makuhita back in the day, now in HOME but hadn't done the other two. One Pikachu hunt later and I'd traded for a Skitty called SKITIT. The last trade, a Bellossom for a Corsola, is hands-down one of the worst in-game trades across the series and for a minute I thought I'd genuinely have to give up on it. Back in the GBA games, evolution stones, one is needed to evolve a Bellossom were incredibly rare and limited. Weirdly, Corsola are easily found and caught in the game making this trade feel unfair or totally unneccessary. Fortunately, I still had a random sun stone rattling around on XD so caught an Oddish, evolved it with the stone and added a Corsola named COROSO to the team. Yay.

OBJECTIVE 3: Ribbons. Here where's the wheels begin to fall off of this objective for the challenge a bit. There are a whopping 25(!) ribbons available in Sapphire & Ruby. These games introduced contests to the series, think pokémon beauty pageants, which have popped up in varying formats across later games in the series. There are four contest ribbons available in five categories; normal, super, hyper and master ranked ribbons in the beauty, cool, cute, smart and tough categories. Then for pokémon which earn every one of the master ribbons with an especially high score compared to fellow NPC competitors, one can earn the artist ribbon as reward for being chosen as a sketch model in the Lilycove City art gallery. Sapphire introduces the effort ribbon for when a pokémon max out their effort values for the first time. There's the champion ribbon earned by beating the Elite Four, the identical ribbon is also alternatively available in Pokémon Fire Red. Lastly there are a pair of battle tower ribbons earned by beating 50 trainers and 100 trainers in a row in the battle tower respectively.

The Trouble with Ribbons

With the legendary pokémon cleared out already and in-game trades easily done thanks to a lucky spare sun stone, getting some of the ribbons is by far the biggest challenge here. The effort ribbon is readily available in a number of subsequent games so I wasn't too worried about EV training the saved guys in order to earn this here. The Elite Four, championed by good ol' Steven, are thankfully not too challenging so it was easy to pull everyone through. The rest, however...

No Contest

The contest ribbons were extremely, not slightly, more challenging. Contests have two phases, a visual contest which is based on a pokémon's condition which can be augmented by feeding pokémon pokéblocks, special sweets which are blended from berries, which have to be grown and harvested. Different pokémon benefit more from different pokéblocks depending on their nature, the rarity of the berries used and how well berries are blended in a rhythm minigame, ideally played with three other players to make the best blocks. The second phase of the competition is quite a clever turn based game where you and the other three competitors use moves in different combinations to earn the most attention from judges. Again, this is somewhat complicated as each pokémon's moves have a category: beauty, smart etc. moves have different outcomes depending on when they are used and moves matching the category earn more stars than moves which don't. In short, mastering competitions is a HUUUUUGE ball ache, made even more challenging by the fact that my copy of Sapphire's internal battery had run dry, meaning that timed events in the game no longer function. Crucially for contests the planting, watering and harvesting berries no longer works on a dry cart battery, even if I wanted to go through all the steps to make competitive pokéblocks. Secondly, pokéblocks, especially more effective ones needed to secure the most contest points are easier to engineer with three other players, with three GBA games and threes GBAs but... that ship has long sailed. Lastly, and here's the kicker, all of the contest ribbons from generation III and generation IV get condensed into one Contest Memory Ribbon in generation VI. If a pokémon has all 20 Ruby/Sapphire contest ribbons and all 20 Diamond/Pearl ribbons, the contest memory ribbon is gold. Otherwise it is purple. With this in mind, considering how impossible really acing the contests was going to be without other players, berries and the full flexibility of augmenting moves for a whole bunch of pokémon, I decided that I'd only be earning one contest ribbon on each pokémon, which will appear as a purple contest memory ribbon in generation VI and ultimately, there was no way I was going to be able to earn the artist ribbon for one, let alone a dozen or so guys.

If that wasn't disheartening enough there was a problem with earning the battle tower ribbons too. Winning 50 battles in a row is difficult. 100 is a serious, serious challenge and one of the crowning accomplishments in any pokémon game. If that wasn't challenging enough, the 50 battles in a row can only be attempted by pokémon at level 50. The 100 battles must be attempted by pokémon at level 100 and unlike later games, levels aren't automatically scaled. This meant that already some of my team weren't eligible for the level 50 battle tower as they were too high level. In the old GBA games, levelling pokémon up to level 100 is also extremely time consuming. Like the contests, there was just no way I'd be able to do this for a team of pokémon I'd specifically trained, used all my unique items on augmenting and thinking about strategy let alone a rag-tag team of lesser used pokémon with mediocre stats. Like the contest ribbons, in later games these all get merged into a Battle Memory Ribbon, again with two different colours depending on if the pokémon has beaten not just two, but eight different battle towers across, the generation III and IV games, including WiFi battles which are no longer available. Seriously, if you see someone with legitimate gold battle or contest memory ribbons, they are true heroes amongst mortals. With this in mind, I was content just to try to earn one battle tower ribbon on each pokémon to unlock the standard tier battle memory ribbon and the battle tower in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl appeared to be the easier one. The pokémon in the gen IV games are auto levelled at the battle tower making threading that needle a bit easier and the easiest to earn 'just' needs 21 wins in a row, not the ludicrous, not to mention tedious 50 in a row slogfest.

True ribbon masters among you may think that I've copped out of OBJECTIVE 3 above but hey listen, it's my arbitrary challenge and my arbitrary ruleset plus even being driven to get this stuff done, I just didn't fancy my chances getting such amazing pokémon as Farfetch'd and Skitty through the gruelling battle towers in this life time or even the next.

So with a few in-game trades picked up, a handful of ribbons earned and many, many more written off, it was off to Sinnoh and the fourth generation of pokémon games.

Ragtag Team of Muffins

For those of you keeping track this is who is in the caravan outta town:A Farfetch'd called CH'DING, a Nidoran(F) called MS. NIDO, a Nidorina called NINA, an Electrode called ESPHERE (it's still a cool name), a Tangela called TANGENY a Mr. Mime called MIMIEN, a Raikou called Corrs, Duking's Plusle, Shuckle, Meditite and Larvitar and a Skitty called SKITIT and a Corsola called COROSO newly scooped up from Sapphire. I'd also trained a Metagross called Metaboss and a Salamence called Batto up in preparation for the battle tower in Sapphire. Although it wasn't to be, they might be of some use in Generation IV's battle tower and Elite Four so they came along too.

Next time: Success in Sinnoh?