Night & Day Appreciation

It's 5Am when I was sitting completing recording for the Elite Four challenge in Pokemon Black. I look up from my play station whilst the credits roll only to realize that the sun is coming up! And then it dawned on me (lulz time pun), I positiviley love day and night cycles plus the transitions that greet their coming.

Overall I'd consider myself a night person. I've never been diagnosed, but I feel I have insomnia and I use this to my advantage. Night is when everyone else in the house is sleeping, giving me ample recording and commentary time. I can't get enough of it! However the day brings in so many more tremendous occurrences. This post isn't a debate of which is more epic (b/c Night pwns every time), this is a piece on my realization of my appreciation of the whole thing and how video games have encouraged this.

My first true termed video game (not Freddie Fish on the computer) was Pokemon Crystal. I say this only so you realize I'm biased in what my feelings for the game was, and maybe that's what leads to this epiphany after all. Making Crystal revolutionary and separate from its predecessors, are the addition of night & day cycles. This allowed for certain Pokemon to appear only at certain times. It also made true day progression, allowing for daily and weekly events such as the bug catching contest. Now everyone's favorite evolutionary titan Eevee had two new time implemented evolutions to look forward to; Espeon & Umbreon. This alone marked big memories in my mind of staying up late with my attachable Gameboy Advanced LED light, searching endlessly for fanciful night time attractions! Most likely this early exposure to long night time jaunts lead to my insomnia, so thank Crystal for efficient uploads.

Unfortunately the euphoria did not carry over into the third generation of Ruby and Sapphire. For some mysterious reason day and night cycles were cut. I speculate it was due to weather effects testing, perhaps an interference in code. Nonetheless many hardcore poke-fans found this unacceptable and dropped the series! Luckily glorious time differential by shading shifts of scenery were brought back in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Many did return to the series due to the enhanced Wi-Fi features, but I see solar rotation as being key! Diamond & Pearl went as far as to make different sound-scapes for varying times on routes. This heightened the sense of ambiance you had when trekking down a route at different times. It also made you stop and take in your surroundings as to double check if the audio had certainly and truly changed.

The Pokemon franchise seems to have trained my brain to pay special attention to the shifting times. I played through Ruby & Sapphire enjoying it despite the lack of sunsets, however I missed them every moment! So now putting it back into perspective at 5am I stare upon the sunrise groggy eyed and gleaming. This epiphany hits me how much I appreciate visually based day & night cycles, and as the sun rise I know from sight it is time for me to sleep......