Nostalgia Bomb! - Crystal Pepsi

What is it?
Crystal Pepsi was a "clear cola" released by PepsiCo. It had no caffeine, but had a flavour similar to a cola, with no lemon-lime or vanilla flavouring to delineate it from other clear soda pop, like 7-Up, Sprite, or some cream sodas.

When did it come out?
Crystal Pepsi was originally released from 1992 to 1993. During that time everything had to be clear or pure. This is when Zima hit the market. PepsiCo decided to try and sell a caffeine-free, clear, clean soda, but it didn't really catch on and only lasted in North American markets for about a year, with a slightly longer run in Europe.

The original packaging - I don't recall ever seeing Diet Crystal Pepsi

What about today?
In 2015 PepsiCo released a small batch of Crystal Pepsi in the United States and it sold very well. In mid-2016 it was re-released across the US and Canada as a seasonal drink.

Why do I remember it?
I don't think I drank copious amounts of Crystal Pepsi when it was first released, but I can clearly remember having it. A friend of the family actually worked at the local Pepsi bottling plant and brought us a bottle to try before it hit store shelves later that year. As I recall it didn't quite taste like regular cola and had much sweeter taste.

I can't say how much the new Crystal Pepsi tastes like the original, but I can say that it still has a slightly sweeter than cola taste. I know the new formula uses high fructose corn syrup, where the original product would have used actual sugar, so that might account for any differences. Also, this new formula contains 64mg of caffeine.

Crystal Pepsi today

Originally Crystal Pepsi was almost marketed as a "healthy" pop alternative; a clear drink with less caffeine and less sugar. These days no one was any illusions that there can be a healthy soft drink, so I feel like PepsiCo just left the caffeine and HFCS in there and let it fly.

I'm certainly not as excited about this Pepsi seasonal offering as I was for Pepsi Throwback, which I bought in copious amounts when it was released in 2013. I believe Throwback may still be available in the US - I hear there are even cherry and vanilla variants - but here in Canada it was only around for a limited time. That said, I'm enjoying a little taste of nostalgia with Crystal Pepsi and I think I'll be sad to see it go at the end of the summer.

Crystal Pepsi is a definite blast from the past!

Hope you enjoyed,
R

RyHo Vs. The Legend of Zelda

A few weeks ago at E3 2016 Nintendo debuted gameplay footage of the next installment in The Legend of Zelda series, Breath of the Wild. They pretty much staked their entire E3 presence around the game, and it has been exalted as the Game of the Show by just about all the video game news sites that were in attendance.

The crux of Breath of the Wild is that it is a massive open world which players can explore anyway they want. For a while now astute gamers have been comparing images from previously shared clips of the game and stating how it appeared to have some similarities with older LoZ titles and it looks like they were right on the money.

BotW takes a lot of cues from the first games in the Zelda series, like the original The Legend of Zelda or Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. These games, although remembered fondly, are incredible difficult and players are basically given no instruction on what to do. You're presented with an open world and you have to try and figure out what steps to take next.

This was refined in later entries in the series, like A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, where although you're presented with a fairly open world, you're give a defined path to walk through and aren't left completely on your own trying to figure out what to do next.

Watching the Nintendo Treehouse - Nintendo's in-house North American product development team - play through BotW at E3 hearkened me back to those old 8-bit Zelda titles and I found myself wanting to revisit them. So I did!

The first LoZ game I ever finished was the first one I played, Ocarina of Time. It's still my favourite, but admittedly I've never gone back and completely finished the titles that came before it. I've put several hours into most of them, but never made it to the end.

The other day I finished, for the first time, the original The Legend of Zelda and it was a blast! I had some help - I used a map someone on the Web stitched together with screenshots of the Overworld, and consulted a walkthrough a few times - but for the most part I tried to just play the game as it was intended. I could remember a few things I'd muscled through in the past; I quickly finished off the first dungeon - Level-1 aka The Eagle - and picked up some essential items, like Heart Containers, the White Sword, Magical Shield, and Blue Ring. After that, though, things got serious as I'd never played much further than that before. It took a little while, but I managed to get to the final dungeon, defeat Ganon, and save Princess Zelda!

I haven't made up my mind on whether or not I'm going to keep this train rolling and play through all the games I've missed in the series or not, but I pretty much instantly booted up The Adventure of Link and am slogging through that game now.

I've been posting my adventures to Miiverse and Twitter and you can follow along, if you'd like! On Twitter I've been hastagging the whole thing with #RyHoVsLoZ, so you can find it easily enough. Although I do own the original games on cartridge, I've been playing on my 3DS out of convenience, so I won't be livestreaming anything just yet, but maybe down the line I'll stream some Legend of Zelda goodness on my Twitch channel, as well. Who knows!

The game of the month for the Cartridge Club is actually Majora's Mask, a game I haven't played since it first came out, so I think I'm going to change gears soon and try to complete that game. I have played that one, as it came out after OoT, but it's been a long time and I'm anxious to give it another try.

So join me as I fight and puzzle my way through the many incarnations of The Legend of Zelda! I'm more than okay with a few tips as I play. Just keep the spoilers to a minimum!

Hope you enjoy,
R

RyHo Talks About Nothing: NX Hype

I've been watching and reading lots of vlogs and blogs about the Nintendo NX lately, so I thought I'd waffle about some of my thoughts on the current rumours surrounding Nintendo's next console.

More importantly, I recorded some video game footage and really wanted to come up with some idea for using it in a video!



Hope you enjoy,
R

RyHo Talks About Nothing: Unboxing the Nostalgia

For around 10 years or so now I've been lamenting that I lost (honestly, I think they were stolen) some of my absolute favourite video games from my collection, but because of re-seller prices I just couldn't bring myself to buy back. I've decided it's about time I picked them up again and this is the first in what will hopefully be a series of videos where I rebuild my collection.

Join me as I unbox the nostalgia!



Hope you enjoy,

R

Theatrical Cut - Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Follow my good friend Cole and I as we take a trip to the theatre to see Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice!



Hope you enjoy,
R