It seems Game Freak/Nintendo are keeping their cards close to their chest when it comes to Pokémon Black/White although this is rather unsurprising. Much like the recent Pokémon Sunday, the latest update of the official Japanese Pokémon website has failed to yield anything new. Rather they have simply uploaded clearer pictures of the screenshots featured in CoroCoro. We’ve made a new gallery for Pokémon Black/White and added them all, take a look!
The Pokémon Video Game Championship, for those who don’t know, is a tournament where Pokémon trainers from all over the world (and by world, they mean the US, Japan and western Europe) get together and tough it out to see who is really the greatest Pokémon master of all. The Elite Four’s got nothing on this.
Do you have what it takes to be the very best, like no-one ever was?
Not only that, but they’re giving away a shiny Eevee! What more reason do you need to go? I’m sure your teacher/boss will understand (they’ll probably be there themselves). Listed below are the locations for the tournaments. Hit the jump afterwards if you’re interested in reading up on the new rules.
North America
May 8, Seattle, WA—Seattle Center Exhibition Hall
May 15, San Francisco, CA—San Mateo County Event Center
May 22, Phoenix, AZ—Phoenix Convention Center
May 29, Dallas, TX—Arlington Convention Center
June 5, Atlanta, GA—Gwinnett Center
June 12, New York, NY—Meadowlands Exposition Center
June 25, Indianapolis, IN * —Indianapolis Convention Center
*Last Chance Qualifier for Nationals
Europe
May 29, Birmingham, United Kingdom—National Exhibition Center
June 5, Cologne, Germany—Pullman Hotel
June 12, Lyon, France—Cite Centre de Congres
June 19, Madrid, Spain—IFEMA Feria de Madrid
World Championship
August 13, Kona, HI *—Hilton Waikoloa Village
*Last Chance Qualifier for World Championships
It’s good news for those in Japan and semi good news for the rest of us. Leaked info from this months CoroCoro magazine reveals that Pokémon fans heading to see Ruler of Illusions Zoroark will be able to download a special Celebi to their carts.
One of the rarer and harder to obtain legendary Pokémon, especially in the UK, Celebi will come in the standard Cherish Ball and have Nasty Plot, Leaf Storm, Recover and Healing Wish as it’s move set.
The Celebi, which is holding a Jaboca Berry, will unlock a special event in HeartGold and SoulSilver which involves you travelling through time into the past, learning more about you rival and Team Rocket and a battle with former Team Rocket boss Giovanni upon your return to the present.
Also revealed in CoroCoro were some more details on the Pre-order Download of the Shiny Legendary Dogs. By Pre-ordering your tickets to the 13th movie, you will be able to download one of these shiny dogs from Pokémon Centers across Japan. Previously we learnt about one of the moves each Dog would know, now two more have been added to each list.
Entei will now know Howl and Crush Claw along with the previously known Flare Blitz
Suicune will have Air Slash and Aqua Ring alongside Sheer Cold
and along with knowing Zap Cannon, Raikou will have Aura Sphere and Weather Ball.
The dogs will be holding a Custap berry, a Rowap Berry and a Micle Berry respectivly.
The Shiny Dogs will be available for download between June 18th and August 31st, while Celebi will be available to download from theatres from the movies release on July 10th until September 30th. Hopefully, either later this year or early next year, the Celebi will make its way into an event in the west, even better would be if the Legendary Dogs were to make it over here as well.
That’s all we have for now, we’ll bring you more news when we learn about it
Japanese website Oricon Style has recently announced details regarding the theme song for the 13th Pokémon movie, Ruler of Illusions: Zoroark, starring so far the only known Pokémon from the 5th generation.
Ruler of Illusions Zoroark movie poster
The theme song is called “Ice Cream Syndrome” and will be performed by Sukima Switch , a jazz fusion duo. The song has been described as a “medium-tempo love song” and it has been said the lyrics are supposed to express sad feelings.
Japanese duo Sukima Switch
We’ll let you know more as it develops.
Pokémon Sunday is a popular Japanese TV show which, as the name suggests, airs on Sunday. It mostly shows old Pokémon episodes, but has also been known to break exciting new developments in the Pokémon world. If you keep up with this sort of thing then you’ll know this much already.
What you may not know, and will no doubt be disappointed to hear, is that Pokémon Sunday unfortunately offered us no new information this time around. However, fret not because the Japanese Pokémon website has promised an update on the 15th April and as soon as it does we’ll let you know!
So, when you first saw Diamond and Pearl, what did you think of how it looked. The buildings were all in 3D, but it still kind of looked like Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/LeafGreen/FireRed – so it was a little weird, but it was a little cool too… right? Well be prepared for that feeling again, because Black and White looks anything but plain.
As you might be able to see, there’s a bit of a shift in the angle the games played at, giving an almost side on aproach. In the battle screen, you can see a lot more of the Pokémon you’re using giving you a feel that you are truly standing in this battle. In towns, the skyscrapers in the background are clearly towering up into the air, while inside the Pokemon Center it looks a lot more like you’ve personally stepped through the door yourself.
Apart from the camera angle, there’s a lot more revealed in these pictures than at first glance. First, both the Male and Female trainer are shown. The female in the City/Pokemon Center, while the boy is in cave and in the town (the starting town by any chance). Both are wearing baseball caps, although the boy has his on backwards. Both have brown hair, the boys bushy from the sides of his cap, the girls in a ponytail coming out the back of her cap. Boy is wearing blue top, with what looks like a bag on his right side. The girl is in pink, although no bag can be seen.
The Pokémon Center has been completly re-desgined, with what looks like a Poké Mart in built into the building, different style for the nurse (now with brown hair) and a if thats the user PC on the left side of the couter, that’s something else completly redesigned. You’ll also notice that the Mart cleark has a speach bubble, indicating that people talking will now use speech bubbles as aposed to just a generic text box at the bottom of the screen.
Other than the graphical improvements and mentioning that Pokémon Black and Pokémon White will use more 3D, CoroCoro doesnt mention a lot more than that. What it DOES mention though, is that players will be able to use a form of transport never been seen before in the games, one of the pictures has a car in it (its under the bridge), but there’s a lot of modes of transport not been used so far, so it could be anything.
We’ll leave you with some close up shots of the CoroCoro scans, and we hope to bring you more sometime in the next 12 hours as Pokémon Sunday airs in Japan. Dont forget to discuss the new look on our forums, or in the comments below
Within the next 48 hours, both CoroCoro magazine and Pokémon Sunday are due to reveal information about the new DS Pokémon games being released later this year. But the recently redesigned Japanese Pokémon Website has just announced the names for the forthcoming games.
Soon Pokemon fans will be playing Pokémon Black and Pokémon White.
We’ll bring you more details on the games as soon as it’s released, but for now, either drop by the forums or use the updated comments system to tell us what you think
Since the release of Pokémon Heart Gold/Soul Silver recently it’s likely that Pokémon news is going to dry up for a bit. However, that doesn’t mean there has to be any down time here!
Now that Pokémon HG/SS has been out for at least a few weeks in all regions it seems like the perfect time to introduce our new comments system. Now you can comment and share with your friends using your Facebook or Twitter account, follow other commenters, rate comments and have threaded discussions! Why not give it a try? What do you like about Heart Gold/Soul Silver? What do you hate about it? Click the comment button at the bottom of this article and share your thoughts on it with the community!
EDITED 27/03 with new info, see bottom of article.
Thanks to my buddy Toothache for the heads up on this. A Dutch site insidegamer has posted a blue screen glitch is occuring in copies of Heart Gold. This is the result of the game being a fake copy of the game. The following is directly translated (badly) from http://www.insidegamer.nl/nintendods/pokmonheartgold/nieuws/29248/Intertoys-Pokmon-HeartGold-uitgesteld-vanwege-bug.html
News | March 23, 2010 – The release of Pokemon Gold Heart is under an employee of Inter Toys indefinitely postponed by an error somewhere. According Intertoys appears a bluescreen while playing. This makes it impossible for the game at all for the first time to start without error in the following image.
We can confirm that from my own research Heart Gold indeed an error on startup. The error message displayed stored data can not be read to the Nintendo DS and restart, the same message back into view. Soul Silver is doing as far as we have to test it properly.
We have contacted Nintendo Benelux, but they can not yet confirm this bug. At present there is still no confirmation from Nintendo on the postponement of Pokemon Gold Heart. We hope as soon as possible to get clarification from Nintendo.
Its scary how quickly fake copies of the game has come out, and that they are in curculation. Basically the copies use an imported ROM version of the game which breaks down on the cart, causing it to be unplayable (thus the message).
Basically be carefull where you buy your copy of HeartGold (or SoulSilver for that matter, although that’s not effected yet) – make sure its a recognised shop and you will be able to go back to it if anything goes wrong, especially on the Internet. Be very careful with Ebay, as that is where the fakes turn up quickly and easily. If your in the UK, Roy’s Toys is a good place to buy from, plus TPC visitors can get 10% off when pre-ordering by using the promo code TPC4EVER at the checkout, but you better be quick – the game is released Friday.
EDIT 27/3: as Sol has pointed out in the comments, it turns out this isnt a problem of fake copies (although fakes can and will cause the same problem). Nintendo of Europe yesterday posponed the release of the games in Netherlands and other dutch speaking areas, and recalled any early dutch copies as they are causing an error where they dont detect save files. All other languages do not seem to be affected.
Today (or yesterday if you’re in Japan) Nintendo revealed some details about a new Handheld system they plan to have released in Japan by this time next year (or end of March 2011 if you want a specific time frame).
Currently known as the Nintendo 3DS, the system will allow the player to experiance games in 3D (do you see what they’ve done with the name there). While not much is known about the console yet, it is said that the games will be in 3D without the player needing to wear any special glasses, and that it will be fully backwards compatible with the DS and DSi games (although are there any actual DSi games out there, cause I’ve never seen one).
The current rumour is that the system will be able to create an illusion of depth based on the position of your head, which it picks up via a special sensor detecting head movement. This rumour has come about based on an interveiw from Satoru Iwata who said the next DS should be able to “read the movement of people playing”
Nintendo is due to unvaile the console and more details at E3 in June. We’ll bring you more news when we know it. In the meantime, dont forget to swing by the Forums and post, especially if you wish to discuss Heart Gold and Soul Silver
