New The Pika Club Adoption Agency

The Pika Club Adoption Agency has had a major overhaul. In the past tradition would name such a massive update as something like The Pika Club Adoption Agency v2.0 but for the sake of simplicity I’ll break from tradition and keep the name The Pika Club Adoption Agency. This can be considered the spiritual successor to TPC RPG v4 in many ways as that project has not been worked on in a long time and I am now announcing is officially cancelled. I had always said during TPC RPG v3’s lifetime that if the Pokémon games came up with a decent method of trading, battling and playing with others worldwide then I would quit and I feel that the Pokémon GTS has succeeded in doing just that. For fans of the RPG you’ll find many familiar features in the new Adoption Agency. You don’t battle Pokémon or complete missions, but here’s a quick rundown of all the new features as compared to the old Adoption Agency.

Your Trainer Card – This has replaced your Pokémon. Rather than 1 Pokémon now you have a party of 6 on you at all times that visitors can interact with! You have a box for extra Pokémon that you can use to switch around at any time. Your Trainer Card is highly customisable and will automatically update your card wherever you’re showing it as soon as you make any changes!

Breeding Centre & Trade Centre – You can now breed compatible Pokémon! As long as you have male and female Pokémon of compatible egg groups you can now breed the two to produce an egg! You can then trade this with other breeders on the Adoption Agency if you wish using the Trade Centre. The screenshot also shows off another new feature – many features now take place in real time. That mean, for example, that hatching eggs no longer relies on a certain amount of clicks unlike the old Adoption Agency. Now eggs take time to hatch and clicks help speed up the hatching process!

Your Pokédex – Now you can own more than one Pokémon it only makes sense that you would have your own Pokédex! This will automatically update the seen/caught amounts as you explore the agency and interact/trade with others! With over 100 Pokémon currently available, you will have your work cut out to catch ’em all!

Your Achievements – A brand new feature is achievements. Achievements are small tasks that you can perform around the website in order to unlock various exlcusive prizes. These can be either new trainer images or card bases for your breeder’s card or Pokémon eggs unavailable anywhere else! Most achievements tell you how to unlock them but some are hidden that you must find for yourself!

Daily and weekly events – Real time events have also been incorporated into the Adoption Agency to make sure you always have a new experience every day you visit! For example, as in the picture above every week Buena gives away a new prize for you. It could be a new card base, a trainer image or a new Pokémon egg! You won’t know unless you visit each week!

As this is such a big expansion we’ve given the Adoption Agency its own forum which you can get to here. Please tell us what you think of the new Adoption Agency! We want to know what you think of it, what parts you like and dislike and how you think it could be made better!

Enjoy!

New Pokémon revealed

The Pokémon Black/White bus tour has brought with it yet some another new Pokémon as well as some clearer shots of already leaked ones.

Basurao - Already revealed but we now have a clearer picture

Darumakka from another animation frame

Tabunne (タブンネ)

Tabunne is apparently a normal type and can learn Growl, Helping Hand and Double Slap. We’ll bring you more as it happens.

Update: It turns out the ugly grass Pokémon and another one we did not report on due to legitimacy doubts have been confirmed as fake. There are some doubts about Tabunne. We’ll keep you updated.

New CoroCoro archive

Searches for CoroCoro magazine scans and leaks rank among our most popular keywords and so I’ve added an archive of all the CoroCoro scans we have which you can access from the ‘Galleries’ dropdown menu. Right now it only goes back to May 2009 but I’d like for it to go back further. If you have any relevant (ie about Pokémon) CoroCoro scans please get in touch and help us flesh out our archive!

Click here to go to the archive.

Fans give Pokémon Mini new lease of life

It’s very unusual for us to comment on the machinations of unofficial fan made works but a piece of news was recently brought to my attention that piqued my interest. The Pokémon Mini, which was released in 2001/2002 and is still the world’s smallest console with interchangeable cartridges, was given a new lease of life a few months ago when several skilled hackers finally managed to crack the console. This means that homebrew games can now be run on the tiny console, which packs a surprising whollop considering its size.

Pokémon Mini: The world's smallest interchangeable cartridge console

The story is a few months old now but it could always do with some more attention. If you’re one of the admittedly few owners of this console and you fancy getting some more out of it then head over to www.pokemon-mini.net and take a look!

Straight from the director’s blog: all new Pokémon in Black/White

While it’s a rather small piece of news, the Gamefreak director’s blog (which used to be updated in English and Japanese but it seems they’ve given up on the English side) recently updated with an interesting tidbit, which you can read here.

In essence apparently Pokémon Black/White will feature absolutely no old Pokémon before getting the National Dex. This means it’s all new Pokémon in Isshu for the first part of your adventure. You could hear the Japanese Pokémon fans cheering across the globe as the news broke at the realisation that, until the National Dex at least, there would be no running into wild Geodude and Zubat in every cave ever. There has been some discontent over this as well as it also means you won’t be able to use any old favourites for a while and if no Pokémon from Generation V interest you then you’re stuck up until you get the National Dex. What do you think of the matter? Leave a comment or tell us on our forums!

New Pokémon + Team Plasma Revealed

This week’s Oha Suta has revealed some new Pokémon along with confirming that Pokémon Black/White will follow the standard formula of having an evil organisation – this time called Team Plasma.

Shikijika (シキジカ)

Two Miruhoggu (ミルホッグ), the evolution of Minezumi

Unknown Swan Pokémon, circled

Team Plasma, looking somewhat like mediaeval knights

Shikijika, the small deer Pokémon, may be a pre-evolution for Stantler. They are both deer Pokémon and Stantler’s Japanese name is Odoshishi, lending some similarity. This is all speculation however and has yet to be confirmed – what is confirmed is that Minezumi now has an evolution.

A short video, which you can view here, shows off the differences between Black City and White Forest as well as a look at what’s called the Pokéshifter, what appears to be a touch screen mini-game where you have to ‘catch’ Pokémon by drawing on a bow and arrow on the touch screen as they hop from bush to bush. This is shown to be used in the same manner as Pal Park and has confirmed that you can transfer Pokémon from Generation IV to Generation V.

Black City and White Forest. Also shows off the new larger Pokémon Centre design.

The Pokéshifter building and a screenshot of the minigame.

There is also a 6 minute Pokémon Black/White Promotional Video which shows off just how impressive the games look. The games are using a lot more 3D effects than any past handheld Pokémon game and it seems the development team have found a fondness for large sweeping environments, from huge bridges to trains spanning land masses. It’s worth a look because it reveals a lot of new information about the game. We’ve screencapped pieces we feel important below but it’s recommended you watch the video too to see it all in action.

The Isshu region. It's unknown if this is the entire region or if there is more.

Although difficult to make out as a still, trains are shown passing below the player. Later a shot shows the player boarding a train.

CGear, showing the connectivity the games will utilise between local wireless and Nintendo WiFi. Later the video suggests IR can now be used for linking games.

A close up shot showing character sprites are taller than before.

Dressing up your Pokémon. Curiously shows a signal strength box in the corner.

Your dressed up Pokémon take place in musicals which have apparently replaced contests.

For some reason you can get shot out of a cannon.

Particle effects - not just for intros anymore!

Pokémon Sunday 18/07/2010

Courtesy of Filb.de

This week’s Pokémon Sunday episode recently aired in Japan and while it did not bring about any new Pokémon it did bring some new information as well as the chance to listen to some of the in-game music. The video shows off Black City and White Forest, the two areas that differ depending on which version of the game you get as well as confirming that you definitely battle Cheren and Belle. Also in a first we see the protagonist talking to N in first person with a full face shot against the backdrop of a ferris wheel.

Interestingly the video also shows off the Pokémon Global Link and Dream world. From what is shown it appears that you upload your Pokémon from your game to the Pokémon Global Link which is then accessed through a website on your browser. This appears to be the dream world previously discussed. This is all tentative speculation at the moment – hopefully we’ll learn more about this soon.

Kibago vs Munna

The video also shows off the new more animated battles. We see Kibago using some sort of physical attack that hits Munna multiple times in one move as well as some other battles between known new Pokémon.

Pokémon Sunday promises to go into greater depth about 3v3 battles next week and apparently the next issue of CoroCoro is set to reveal a new legendary Pokémon. We can only wait and see!

Latest CoroCoro leaks new Pokémon

The July issue of CoroCoro has just leaked on 2ch.net and as expected it reveals some new Pokémon, including the one featured in a silhouette on Pokémon Sunday mentioned below.

Wooguru - ウォーグル

The first scan shows off Wooguru (ウォーグル), the ‘Valour’ Pokémon. It is a Normal/Flying type weighing 41kg and standing 1.5m tall. Its ability is Keen Eye and can learn a new attack known as Free Fall (フリーフォール). It is a two-turn move that involves picking a Pokémon up, flying up and then dropping it on the next turn.

The scan also reveals the names of two previously known Pokémon.

Rankurusu [ランクルス] (background) & Gochiruzeru [ゴチルゼル] (foreground)

Rankurusu (ランクルス) in the background & Gochiruzeru (ゴチルゼル) in the foreground

Gochiruzeru (ゴチルゼル) – The green cell like Pokémon from which it partly derives its namesake.

Rankurusu (ランクルス) – The black/purple humanshape Pokémon with a name partly derived from ‘chaos’. It is a psychic type, 1.6m tall and one of its possible abilities is Magic Guard.

Musharna (ムシャーナ) (the Pokémon) & Makomo (マコモ), a friend of Professor Araragi.

Musharna (ムシャーナ) above is revealed as the evolution of Munna which has been previously revealed. It has something to do with Dream Smoke (ゆめのけむり) which may have something to do with the Pokémon GTS but right now not much is known.

Kibago (キバゴ) top, Koromori (コロモリ) middle and Minezumi (ミネズミ) bottom

There are some more scans but they don’t reveal any new Pokémon or ground breaking new info – hit the jump for them.

Continue reading →

Pokémon Black/White merchandise and new Pokémon

Wow news can pop up fast! Right now the latest news comes by way of Pokebeach who managed to snap some pictures of new Pokémon apparently shown in an advert before the first screening of the latest Pokémon movie.

Minezumi

Unnamed Pokémon

It seems like we’ve also got a confirmation for Koromori mentioned in a prior news post by way of a new trailer from Oha Suta. This lends extra credence to the scan and therefore it seems likely that the evolutions for the three new starters it also pictures are probably the real deal.

Koromori from Filb.de

Apparently a user on 2ch (the largest imageboard in Japan) has acquired some merchandise claiming to be new Pokémon too:

Possible new Pokémon

Another Japanese imageboard user has also claimed to have obtained a demo of Pokémon Black/White containing a few new Pokémon. Below is a screenshot supposedly taken from the demo.

Hataboo

As with anything when it comes to new Pokémon take this all with a grain of salt because everyone is scrambling to become the first to report news and in doing so it can be all too easy to accept news from unconfirmed sources.

One thing we can confirm is that there is some Pokémon Black/White themed DS merchandise on the way!

Pokémon Black/White earphones and DS carry cases.

Whether these make it to the west or if they remain solely in Japan we don’t know yet but we’ll let you know as soon as we know. Hit the jump for some more new Pokémon Black/White pictures.

Continue reading →

New Pokémon tentatively announced

A few days ago an image was leaked on a Japanese imageboard purporting to be from a developmental sheet for the Pokémon anime. What is interesting is that this image, while small and blurry, seems to show off 4 new Pokémon including evolutions for two of the starters.

As ‘new Pokémon’ scans always pop up during development of a new Pokémon generation this was not paid much heed until recently when the new girl from the character sheet appeared in silhouette form at the end of the trailer for the new Pokémon anime series, ‘Pocket Monsters Best Wishes’ which was shown after a trailer for the new movie in Japan after this week’s latest Pokémon anime episode.

This isn’t confirmed news by any means but the consistency of the girl lends it credence. Since the sheet is so small it’s hard to clearly see what the names of the new Pokémon are – the best guess given is that the Pokémon to the left of Jesse’s head is コロモリ (Koromori). With such tiny text it’s really anyone’s guess until more information is revealed and we can say for sure whether this is real or not.