oh man – i have a few lousy days and the news just keeps flying off… ok i’m going to try and recap all of it in this news post – oh boy!

Anime News:
Febuary 5th sees the Cartoon Network in the USA premier the 13th Pokemon Movie, Zoroark: Masters of Illusions (check your local listings). One week later on Febuary 12th sees the same channel debut the latest pokemon series, Pokémon: Black & White. When announcing the new show, it announced the English names for Ash’s new companions. Iris keeps her Japanese name while Dento becomes Cilan – these names are important to the new Black/White games as both characters appear. Cilan is one of 3 possible Gym leaders at the first Gym, you’ll fight him if you start with Oshawott as your starter. Iris appears in both games, but in White version she’s the 8th Gym leader.

TCG News:
Not something i seem to post often around here, which is both a shame and something I plan to rectify in future. Following on from the next TCG set, Call of Legends, out on Febuary 9th – The first set to be based on Black and White will be released in April. This is a month earlier than the usual schedule the TCG sets get released, so whether the second B/W set will be released a month earlier or whether there will be a month longer gap is currently unknown – we’ll let you know all we can when we can.

Game News:
Ok, here’s the bulk of the news and we’ve got a lot to get through. First up, Victini, while keeping its Japanese name, has been announced for distrabution outside of Japan. While announced for the UK specifically, the info will most likely apply to the US as well. The Liberty Pass is an item allowed to catch a boat from Castelia City to Liberty Island where you’ll fight a couple of Team Plazma members before having a chance to fight and capture Victini. This item is set to be downloaded via Wi-Fi between March 4th and April 22nd

The Pokemon Company International has announced details on how the Global Link will work outside of Japan. Featuring the same features the Japanese version uses, Global Battle Union (keeps track of your online Battle stats), Global Trade Station (similar to the old GTS site) and the Dream World (allowing you to play with your pokemon away from the game, obtain berries and pokemon with abilities unobtainable via any other method). The Gloabll Link will be accessed using Pokemon Trainer Club Accounts, the account system used at Pokémon.com (which recenly launched reigon variation sites, so now pokemon.com is the official site of not only america, but the UK, Australia and other european countries). If you dont have a Trainer Club account yet – you might want to pop along to pokemon.com to get one now in preperation. We’ll let you know when the Global Link site launches for USA/Europe

Right – last thing, i hope, is that IGN has once again annouced some more pokemon names. All of these names apeared on the leaked list that appeared a few weeks ago – i will be updating the unova dex we have on this site will be updated with these names over the weekend. For now, here’s the new pokemon (with sprites, not sugimori artwork, i dont have time to upload the cooler artwork)

the first 2 pokemon they announced were Pansage, the grass elemental monkey who’s name was revealed on the back of the B/W box art already, and Victini, who’s name was confirmed in the Wi-Fi event above. They did annouce the english name for Pansage’s attack that can hit anybody on the opposing team in a 3v3 match regardless of where Pansage is placed. The attack is called Acrobatics. Meanwhile, Victini’s ability ‘Victory Star’ keeps its Japanese name.

Shikijinka:

Deerling is a pokemon who changes his image depending on the season. it’s herbivore ability is now called Sap Sipper

Basuro:

Basculin has 2 different looks, depending on the version your playing, one type is very common while the other is very rare

Swanna:

Swanna keeps its Japanese name. it’s Gale attack is now called Hurricane

Miruhoggu:

Watchog is the evolved form of Patrat.

IGN also featured Alomomola and Sewaddle as well.

That’s it for the news for now – hopefully we’ll bring you more news as soon as we learn of it.