Video Games

Horkers: The War Walruses of Skyrim

Like many many other people, I’ve been playing Skyrim lately. I got my copy for Christmas, so I haven’t played through the game too far, but I am looking forward to (well, not really, until I level up some more) running into a Horker! As you can see above, the Horker is a sort of walrus-beast and exists in the world of Skyrim as a wild random encounter. The Skyrim Wiki explains..

Horkers are passive-aggressive creatures usually found near water, particularly the ocean and cold areas. They are often encountered in groups and are highly social…

As in real life – Horkers are valuable for their meat and tusks. More information about their in-game stats is available here: http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Horker

Update: I ran into my first Horkers last night. They must have recognized me a a friend of the walrus, for they did not attack, and I left them alone.

Fus-Ro-Dah!

Walrein, I choose you!

Many of you will recognize this image immediately. Yes, it’s Walrein, an ice and water-type Pokemon from the Pokemon Blue/Red series. For players, Walrein evolves from Seleo at level 44. If you’ve ever played Pokemon and used this guy – you’ll know that the Ice Ball attack is a powerful advantage in play.

I’m too old to have played Pokemon the first time around, but my now 11 year old son is a Pokemon master – he even made it to the finals in the regional video game tournament one year. Since he plays pretty much all available versions of Pokemon so much, I have played through Pokemon Blue and “Wally” the Walrein was part of my finishing team!

I enjoy the behavioral and habitat information that Walrein has in his bio:

Walrein live in large groups near the shore with their pre-evolved forms. These groups are always led by the largest male Walrein who acts as the beachmaster. Fighting for dominance among males can get pretty fierce, and many are the male Walrein who bear scars from challenging the beachmaster and losing.

Here’s more information about Walrein on the Bulbapedia, a community-driven Pokemon encyclopedia wiki.
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Walrein_(Pok%C3%A9mon)

 

 

 

 

 

Bluey The Walrus

This is “Bluey The Walrus” who is a boss-level character in the video game “Diddy Kong Racing”. H’es found in the”Snowflake Mountain” area of the game. Apparently he’s pretty hard to beat, at least is the Nintendo DS version of the game.

Here’s the wiki entry about Bluey over at Super Mario Wiki.

I’ve done a fair amount of research towards cartoon walrus characters, and have been noticing the frequent use of the walrus as a video game character – I sense a new category of posts. In fact, I’ve just added a category for video games to the blog’s category list. We’ll see what else I can find. As for Bluey, I’ll put my son, a voracious player of all DS games, on the case and we’ll see if we can get some hands-on Bluey racing experience.