Pokémon Center Event (Japan) and Official Website Redesign (USA)

Wouldn’t you just know it, just as you finish saying “there’s nothing interesting happening at the moment”, something interesting goes and happens. News out of Japan says that the Pokémon Centers (the real life ones that sell Pokémon related stuff) are handing out a new Pokéwalker Course between 29th January and the 28th February. The course is appropriately titled ‘Event’ and features Chatot, Sableye, Croagunk, Buneary, Pikachu and Pachurisu.

A little closer to home, The American Pokémon site, pokemon.com has updated their site. Along with a fresh new look (something that’s been needed for a few years), the new site brings several new features including an updated Pokédex, a TCG card dex, several free games to play and episodes of the anime you can watch online. There’s also a trainers club which will allow you to make a custom trainer and earn trainer tokens. The site also combines the old go-poekmon.com, and now serves all the TCG and Organised Play news and updates that go-pokemon.com did. The for al those that do Organised Play, part of the new Trainers Club can be used to keep track of all your OP stats.

Along with the fresh new look, the site also has news on the Pokéwalker, confirming that the peripheral will be coming out to with the US versions of Heart Gold and Soul Silver. The article explains nothing new for anyone who’s been following HG/SS since their announcements, explaining that the walker is used to level up Pokémon when not playing the game, it can be used to catch additional Pokémon and items and can communicate with other Pokéwalkers in a feature reminiscent of the original Mystery Gift option in the original Gold and Silver games, giving both users a free gift via infra red, but only once per person, per day and up to ten maximum.

Still no info on Heart Gold and Soul Silver in any form for Europe, nor has the UK official Pokémon site had a refresh (something its needed doing longer than the US one). We’ll bring you more news when we learn about it.

Minor site modifications

This is a quick update to say that I have been making a few modifications around the website. You’ll notice that you can now email articles to friends, as well as rate them.

I’ve also modified the sites look slightly, changing the font face and decreasing the menu widths to give the content block a bit more space. You might see a couple other modifications in the coming days, but no major changes.

Edit: I’ve also changed the “Pokemon HG/SS Gallery” link on the top menu to just “Galleries” as it’s now a portal to other gallery pages. I’ve added a new gallery: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky. Check it out!

Edit #2: I’ve also added a poll on the right hand side. Please vote in it!

HG/SS Image Gallery

It’s been an uneventful news day but we at The Pika Club have been hard at work giving you visitors a reason to keep visiting. We’re constantly hard at work reporting on anything and everything related to Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver we find, but we also understand sometimes all you want to do is look at pictures. They’re especially exciting when a new game is coming out and screenshots are scare. So we’ve taken this opportunity to open up an image gallery so you can browse magazine scans, screenshots and anything else related to Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver at your leisure. We’ll keep it regularly updated, so keep checking back!

On another note, the navigation menu on the right has been modified slightly to make accessing all the different features The Pika Club has to offer easier. Be sure to register on our forums and tell us how we’re doing and what you think of Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver!

New Blog Design

As may be obvious to those who have visited us before, The Pika Club has just got a redesign. While it’s not as pretty as before, a new design was needed for a while as a lot of important information on the old design was not very easy to come by.

It’s still not complete yet and some minor things will be changing here and there over the coming days but it should not cause much of an inconvenience and everything will work as normal in the meantime.

So while we’re at it, TPC needs a new banner! Think you can do better than the current one of Ash? (The answer is yes!) Well then, now’s your chance to prove it! We need a 576×181 banner for this blog. The only requirements are it have a transparent background and roughly fit in with the current website design. To submit an entry, simply upload it somewhere (eg imageshack.us) and then comment on this article including the link to your banner. The winning banner will be used on this blog!