Europe Platinum and Secret Key

Just a quick note, all those of you who live within the Euopean Region can now get their hand’s on Pokemon Platinum from today. The 3rd DS game features an enhanced storyline, battle frontier and some alternate forms for some Pokemon not available in D/P. Giratina has an Origin Forme for when he’s in the Reverse world (and once you get an item that can be attached). Trade your Event Shaymin from earlier this year over to Platinum and it will help you obtain an item capable of changing its form to its new ‘Sky Forme’ (its a temporary transformation, only when its in your party and during the day but you can re-use the item)… and then there is Rotom

Rotom has 5 new forms it can transform into, all of which are hidden in a secret room in the building Team Galactic made its home in Eternia City. You’ll need the Secret Key to get it, America just finished up thier event that allowed them to download the key via Wi-Fi recently and now its been dated for the European versions. Head onto Wi-Fi between June 8th and July 19th to get your Key.

That’s all for now, back later when we know something else

Pokemon Camping Gear

Pokemon is a hugely successful franchise worldwide but it’s particularly huge in Japan, where it is plastered on almost literally everything. Pokemon plane? Check. Pokemon X-ray machine? Check. And so now Japan is getting ready for the release of Pokemon camping gear. Seems pretty normal compared to some of the stuff Pokemon has had its name plastered all over in the past.

Camping gear

The gear goes on sale next month and includes sun shades, leisure play seats, mini-tables and a lantern.

Helps If I Read the TV Guide Completely

In an amendment to the previous post, another Pokemon Movie premier is set to appear on UK TV channel Jetix. Pokemon 4Ever, which as the title references is the 4th Pokemon movie, will air on Sunday 24th May at 9am, before the 10th movie (at 10.30am) and the 11th movie (at 12.30pm) – now that’s a movie marathon.

I could be wrong with this (and if I am, leave a comment), but I believe that this is the first time that Pokemon 4Ever has been shown on UK Television. Either way, its proving that Jetix is committed to becoming the new UK home for Pokemon.

Pokemon 11 Movie UK Air Date

The 11th Pokemon Movie: Giratina and the Sky Warrior is scheduled to air on the UK channel Jetix on Saturday May 23rd at 9am, probably to celebrate the release of Pokemon Platinum on Friday. The movie features Ash, Pikachu and traveling companions coming across a Shaymin on thier travels after it gets in the middle of a battle between Giratina and Dialga. During the movie, Ash and friends end up in the reverse world that Giratina inhabits in its Origine Form. But while Giratina want’s Shaymin for its own purposes, there is somebody out there who wants the power Giratina posseses and will do anything to take it. During the course of the movie, Shaymin also changes to its Sky Forme.

The movie will be repeated on Sunday at 12.30pm, after a showing of the 10th Movie: The Rise of Darkrai at 10.30am, the events in that moive influence the events that take place in the 11th movie.

In other Anime news, in a few weeks time Pokemon will air its 600th episode in Japan. To celebrate, the 599 and 600 will be a two part massive battle between Ash (or Satoshi as he’s known in Japan) and his main Sinnoh rival Paul(known better as Shinji in Japan), the episodes are entitled ‘Full Batte! Shinji Vs Satoshi (Part One)’ and ‘Full Batte! Shinji Vs Satoshi (Part Two)’ and will air on the 11th and 18th of June respectivly.

More when we learn it

Just One More Thing…

In the last post I said that we knew 3 things about Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver thanks to the latest issue of CoroCoro magazine. Clearer shots of some pages have revealed one more thing, the bottom screen of the DS. Hidden on the left corner of the page with the female trainer (where the fold in the book just happens to be) is a picture of the male hero in front of Elm’s lab. Nothing special, the Pokemon Sunday footage showed that. What this shot does show, is a green menu with icons on it. This is the lower screen of the DS, and the menu is the main menu of the game (with ‘Pokemon’, ‘Bag’, ‘Your Name’, ‘Save’… THAT menu) Currently missing from that menu in the screen shot is Pokedex, probably because its taken too early in the adventure to have the dex yet. Anyway, here’s the picture with menu:

Menu Screen

Also we’ve got a better shot of the picture you’ll see when entering sprite tower (ignore the part of the male trainers leg that cuts the corner of the picture):

corocoro-clearer-2

More when we learn it!

Coro Coro Heart Gold and Soul Silver Info

So the new issue of CoroCoro Magazine has revealed more details on Heart Gold and Soul Silver, and there’s three main things we know. 1, in all the main screen shots the starter is definatly following the player around. This seems to confirm that it will follow you around. How this will completly work, we don’t know. In Pokemon Yellow, Pikachu would follow you around until you put him in a box, traded him over to another game or evolved him, the latter two options ment that you could never get Pikachu to follow you again.

2, We know that instead of reserecting Kris, the very first female trainer from Pokemon Crystal (and a personal favorite of mine), she will be replaced by a new female trainer.

3, Coming back from Leaf Green and Fire Red, those cool little scene pictures that apear when you enter caves or forests are back. On the scans we can see a shot for the Sprout Tower as you enter it.

So other than some updated artwork for all the Pokemon, there’s not a lot more revealed. Well apart from a Pikachu colored Pichu in Ilex Forest… is this the same one that’s available for Download in Japan for the 12th movie, and what’s it doing by Celebi’s shrine anyway? Well aint that typical, doesnt answer many questions, but asks a few more.

Hit the more link for the scans themselves, we’ll bring you more when its known…

Continue reading →

Pokemon Sunday Info

So Pokemon Sunday made thier big announcment this week, the one that everyone knew before it was officially confirmed… Pokemon Heart Gold and Pokemon Soul Silver will be in Japanese stores by the end of the year. And that’s about all they said. They didn’t really reveal anything else, so we all hope that CoroCoro Magazine will do that later this week.

What Pokemon Sunday did show was a brief clip of the new game, so we can see just what the new game will look like. for a comparison, i’ve gotten a shot of how the original game looked when you played it on a Game Boy Colour on the left, while the right picture shows you how the new game will look on your DS… and it looks GOOD

How it use to look, and how it does now

You’ll notice that there’s a little green blob following our main hero. That’s a Chikorita and in the clip, this little green starter followed the main character around town. Is this just a temporary thing in the game, or will this work like it used to with Pikachu in Pokemon Yellow? Only time and additional info will answer that. More pictures follow the link, including some new art of the 3 starters… we’ll bring you more info on the games when we learn it.

Continue reading →

Gold and Silver Remakes Announced Early

It happens every time, you tell everybody that you’ll make an important announcement soon and just before you do someone goes and announces it for you.

It happened to Pokemon this week, as their planned announcement on Sunday of new DS games has already been leaked on the web. Japanese Yahoo made an article stating the new games to be made, and Pokemon Official Japanese website has confirmed it.

Pokemon Heart Gold and Pokemon Soul Silver will be released in Japan later this year, and that’s all we really know at this point (although check out the cool logo’s above for the games). Hopefully Pokemon Sunday will expand on what the games will be (other than a remake of Gold and Silver using Diamond/Pearl’s graphics and the implemented features introduced after those games.) If Pokemon Sunday doesn’t mention much more, next week sees a new issue of Coro Coro Magazine, so that should give us more info.

I’ll update with more when I learn it

New Pokemon Game to be Announced

We’ve gotten reports out of Japan that something big is about to go down in the Pokemon world.

Basically there was an announcement today that on next week’s Pokemon Sunday show (a Pokemon based variety show), they will be announcing something big in their games section. This announcement (although not 100% confirmed) is likely to do with a new game… a BRAND new game. Could this finally be about the Gold/Silver remake that has been hinted about since as far back as Diamond and Pearl was released? Yes it could… of course if could also be about a new ranger, mystery dungeon or even some other spin off (remember Trozi/Link?). That said, this autumn happens to be the 10^th anniversary since G/S’s release in Japan (seriously… and it will be the 10^th anni of R/B in the UK), so a G/S remake released about then would be timely.

On a side note: this announcement probably has nothing to do with a rumour that Nintendo had asked US game stockist ‘GameStop’ to reserve some space for a BIG game being released in the latter part of this year. Since Pokemon games have a longer space between being released in Japan and US than other franchises, a Japan release of autumn for a Pokemon game would not be available in the US until early spring, based off past years.

On a completely different note: US Platinum Players, don’t forget to get on Wi-Fi and download the Secret Key to be able to get Rotom to become other forms. You’ve only got until the 12^th of May to do it, so if you haven’t done it yet, do it now. Japanese Platinum Players, that Oak’s letter is only going to be available till the 11^th of May, so you need to hurry up as well

That’s all we have, we’ll update you on this news next week.

TPC’s Berrydex released

In pursuing my education I must make another temporary leave of absence from The Pika Club in order to focus on my studies. It was The Pika Club’s Easter project to develop a working dex database in order to compete with other, larger Pokemon websites for usefulness and ease of use. The dex database was to comprise of:

Berrydex
Pokédex
Movedex

Since then other dexs have been suggested to us, such as a PickUpdex and others. While this is something to think about in the future, it is not a priority right now. We somewhat underestimated the undertaking in these 3 dexs alone and did not succeed in completeing these before Easter’s end. However good headway has been made, such that privately I am willing to release the Berrydex which, as far as we are concerned, is 100% complete. This is a preliminary release in that it is not being advertised outside of The Pika Club; rather we prefer to wait until we have our Tridex Tour De Force completed in order to take on the big boys.

An alpha release of our Pokédex, dubbed ‘PHPokédex’, was considered but it is not far enough along and is too cluttered to suggest what it may offer to visitors in the future and it was decided against. I will return sometime in early June and hopefully our dex project will be complete before the summer. For now, click the berry below (or the middle button above this post) to reach our Berrydex.

The Berrydex is undoubtably not without its faults and so I invite all who are registered members of our forums to report bugs, errors, suggest features and offer advice in the appropriate forum.