Archives: DS

New Pokémon Ranger Game

You can tell Christmas is over as the news just won’t stop coming. Hot on the heals of Heart Gold and Soul Silver’s European release date being announced, leaked scans from this months CoroCoro magazine has revealed details of a new Pokémon Ranger game to be released this year.

Titled ‘Pokémon Ranger – Tracks of Light’ the game returns to the popular Ranger format of ‘capturing’ Pokémon with the stylus to assist you in solving problems and tasks. Set in a new region ‘Oblivia’ and against a new bad guy team called the ‘Pokémon Nappers’ the 3rd installment to the Ranger series sees several new additions to the game play. PokéAssists will now send a Pokémon out to help fight the pokemon you’re up against, but will flee when they take damage. You will be able to ride on the backs of several Pokemon, including the legendary dogs, Raikou, Entai and Suicine. Brand new is the ability to call certain Pokemon by drawing a special symbol, current known symbols are for Eevee and Croagunk.

Edit: We now know that the ability to call the Pokémon to your aid will be an add on function to your styler, though how you learn symbols for various Pokémon is not mentioned. You will be able to call the legendary dog’s via this method though, helpful since riding on them will get you past various obsitcals, like Suicune will run down a river or Entai will jump from cliff to cliff. Your partner Pokémon will be a Pichu (who seems increadibly popular with gamefreak at the moment). The Pichu is carrying around a blue Ukulele (like a small guitar if you didn’t know), although why it is nobody seems to know.

New to the Ranger games will be a Multiplayer mode, although its not clear if it will be Wi-Fi or just local wireless (most likely the latter, unfortunatly). Up to 4 players will be able to take part in special missions, and you’ll have to work together in order to capture Pokémon, as you will have to connect the lines that your friends drawn if you want to successfully capture a Pokémon.

Speaking of Special Missions, straight away as the game is released, a download mission will be available that will allow you to obtain a Deoxys, one that will be transferable to your Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Heart Gold or Soul Silver carts. There is something special about the Deoxys you will get, but that wont be revealed until next month.

According to CoroCoro, the game is scheduled for release on 6th March 2010, with a Demo apearing at DS download Stations and via the Wii Channel in Japan at the end of this month (29th Jan to be exact). Pokémon Sunday in Japan was due to have some news in their game section this week (they teased it last week with a big question mark) nothing big was made about it at the time as they’ve done this in the past and not revealed anything special or new (one time, they reveaed Magikarp… seriously, has ANYBODY not heard about Magikarp). However, with this news from CoroCoro, it means that this will likely be the special feature on Pokémon Sunday. Hopefully they’ll have something new to mention, or at the very least have some video footage.

That’s all we have for now, We’ll bring you more as soon as we know about it

Release date announced for HG/SS in UK (and a shiny Pichu for the Americans too)

The Pikachu Colored Pichu (or Shiny Pichu to you and me) is to be handed out at Gamestop shops in the US between January 3oth and February 14th according to an article on Pokémon.com. You’ll be able to download this special Pichu to any Diamond, Pearl or Platinum cart but it doesn’t do much (except look cool) until you transfer it to Heart Gold or Soul Silver. Once there, you’ll need to take the little feller to Ilix Forrest, where out will pop a special Pichu, the Notched Eared Pichu. After a small event between the two, you’ll befriend the Notched Eared Pichu and thus be apart of your Pokémon collection forever.

In other news, Nintendo.co.uk today released a news article about the Pokéwalker. This is the First Heart Gold/Soul Silver related piece of information on any of the UK’s official sites (Pokémon or Nintendo) and not only talks about the Pokéwalker (confirming that it WILL be heading to Europe) but also lists a release date for HG/SS. March 26th is when European players can enjoy a trip back to the lands of Jhoto, less than 2 weeks after its release in America (and, for the second year in a row, a lot earlier than my initial prediction). This is good news for all the people in Europe and should hopefully mean that us people who usually import the games can wait the extra few days and pick up the game a little cheaper.

That’s all we have for the moment, we’ll bring you more when we learn it.

First post of the new year

It’s the first post of 2010 on The Pika Club’s blog and…there’s not much news to be had, unfortunately. Nintendo Europe has failed to announce their Arceus event and there’s no word of their Q1 release schedule yet.

The only news we managed to scrape up is, according to Nintendo, the Nintendo DS is now the best selling video game console in Europe with over 40 million units sold. An impressive figure no doubt but the Wii is fast on its pace with 20 million units in the space of just over three years.

The Pika Club forums have been doing well with an unprecedented level of activity as of late. Why not join in?

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky dated

The 3rd Pokemon Mystery Dungeon instalment, Explorers of Sky, has been given  a release date for the United States according to GameStop. Like Platinum is to Diamond and Pearl, Explorers of Sky is a revist to the games of Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness and features most of the same game. Improvements and additions to the game include 6 additional starters to chose from, new areas to explorer including Destiny’s Tower and Shaymin village, and then there are additional missions inbetween the main storyline, you’ll be able to play as some Non Playable Characters in special missions to learn more about them.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorersof Sky will be released on October 1st acording to GameStop. However since this is a thursday, and games in the US are usually released on a tuesday, it could change. Nintendo of Europe recently released their Q3 release schedule (which goes up to the end of September) and the new PMD game isn’t listed, so there’s no date for europe yet.

We’ll bring you more when we find it.

Mac de DS and Melee! Pokemon Scramble Codes

This will be my last update for a couple of weeks as I am off travelling, but don’t worry! The Pika Club will still be updated so be sure to keep visiting us, you’re sure to find the latest Pokemon news here. That said, there’s really not that much news to report on at the moment, this is only a minor update.

As previously reported on, Nintendo and McDonalds are now offering a DS WiFi service in McDonalds across Japan. Here’s the TV ad for that deal, showing off the Jirachi download event:




Also, for those of you out there that have Melee! Pokemon Scramble, you might be interested in knowing that a secret code has been given out for a Chimchar. That code is 0331-4118. Enter that and you’ll receive a Chimchar that knows Ember.

mpschimchar

On a side note, the forums have just got a new summery theme based on Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky. Check them out!

Latest Issue of CoroCoro brings new Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver Info

The latest issue of CoroCoro has been leaked and with it comes 6 scans revealing new information and Heart Gold/Soul Silver.

First off, there is a promotional event involving Jirachi and McDonalds.
Jirachi McDonalds promotion

The scan discusses that Jirachi will be available at select McDonalds restaurants from June 19-July 17 for Diamond/Pearl/Platinum players. The bottom of the page reveals some pictures of the WiiWare Melee! Pokemon Scramble game and states that the game will be available for DS download play around the same time as theMcDonalds promotion.

Click the link below for much, much more info.

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Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver to come with Pedometer

Another Pokemon Sunday, another update regarding Heart Gold/Soul Silver. This time it’s a pedometer, in the same vain as the Pocket Pikachu from so long ago.

Pedometer

Pedometer

As you can see above, the design is taken after that of a regular Pokéball. It has three face buttons and a monochrome display. You can transmit one Pokemon from your Heart Gold/Soul Silver game to it via what is assumed to be (judging by the picture) an infrared sensor on your game card. As you walk around with the pedometer, your Pokemon gains experience points and happiness.  Mini-games will be included.

It’s unknown if this will be available outside of Japan as of yet.

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!

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

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.

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