Pokemon Black and White’s music was a complete departure from the series’ signature soundfont- it was more electronic, with an emphasis on electric guitar and heavy percussion, and it led to some extremely memorable and atmospheric tunes that have since gone on to be fan favorites. It was also the largest collaborative effort for a Pokemon soundtrack yet: it was composed by Junichi Masuda, Shota Kageyama, Hitomi Satō, Gō Ichinose, Morikazu Aoki, Minako Adachi, and Satoshi Nohara, and is arranged by Shota Kageyama, Hitomi Satō, Gō Ichinose, and Minako Adachi.

With the release of the Black and White collection, only Black 2 and White 2 remain missing from the iTunes Store. The Pokemon Company promises that it will be made available soon.

To me, as a Pokemon loyalist who has stuck with the series since the beginning, they come off simultaneously as exhilarating, and as a bit of a disappointment. Make no mistake, Pokemon Black 2/White 2 are great. As they stand, they are probably the ultimate realization of the Pokemon formula, with everything fine tuned to pitch perfection, the best series progression and pace structure, the best selection of game modes both online and offline, the best roster of critters available from the get go, and overall, delivering the kind of deep, immersive, and addictive Pokemon experience that I demand from each new entry in the saga.

But they also often feel like a step back for the series.

Pokemon Black/White came as a breath of fresh air. After nearly a decade and a half of continuity that the games were increasingly burdening themselves with, the games decided to say ‘screw it,’ and basically rebooted the entire franchise, taking the players to the far off and absolutely disconnected from everywhere else Unova region. Every Pokemon you encountered here was brand new, so you had the sense of discovery and wonder that had not been a part of a Pokemon game since Red and Blue kickstarted the phenomenon back in 1998. Every location was brand new, everything, even though it unfolded as you would expect it to unfold, felt new, as though seen from a fresh new lens. Even the games graphics took the biggest jump a Pokemon game has ever taken visually between two installments, and the games took on a new cinematic bent, with an emphasis on storytelling and characterization, delivering the richest story the games have ever told, one that dared to break series conventions and even ask ethically probing questions that lie at the foundation of the franchise itself.

That is all gone now.

Pokemon Black 2/White 2 take place in the Unova region. Most players coming off of the original Black/White will find themselves almost uncomfortably familiar with the region. The games have taken it upon themselves to make the region seem fresh for returning players: you start out in a new town, and all the places you visit until your third gym battle are brand new locations that you have never been to before. Subsequent to that, you revisit older locales in your quest to win all the gym badges of the Unova region, but you find that they have changed – two years have passed in the game world since the events of Black/White, and for example, a construction site in that game now sports a full fledged newly developed suburb. There’s more, but mostly, it spoils the element of surprise, and I don’t want to spoil the element of surprise, since there isn’t much of it in the game.

A lot else has changed too: the order of the gyms, the layout of the gyms, the roster of Pokemon that gym leaders have, and finally, sometimes, even the gyms themselves. New Pokemon have started appearing in the wild, and Pokemon Black 2/White 2 represent the best distribution of Pokemon in the wild; before the second gym battle, you can have some viable Pokemon on your team that might even make it into your final roster of six, from Mareep to Growlithe and Magnemite. In the past Pokemon games, you just caught throwaway Pokemon to progress through the game, and didn’t even start building your real team until after the end of the game. Not so here. After you’re done with the inordinately long intro sequence, you’re free to start building your team from the get go.

That’s a huge advantage that cannot be understated, and it is reflective of what defines Black 2 and White 2 at their core: these are not Pokemon games for newcomers. Past Pokemon games have always been held back by the fact that they might be the first games for a new player, and so, they have had to slow themselves down, at the expense of the Poke-veteran, to make sure the new player can catch up. Not so with Black 2 and White 2. Oh sure, there are still the introductory tutorials, you’re taught how to use a Pokeball, and all of those shenanigans. But that’s not what I am talking about. The game assumes that you have played Pokemon before, at the very least played the original Black/White before you jumped into this. As such, it doesn’t shy away from having an almost brutal difficulty curve, and introducing some of the more advanced mechanics to begin with.

Even the post game content is made for Pokemon veterans. The lack of a proper post game was, in hindsight, a huge problem, as Black and White never really offered much for the player to do. not so this time. Apart from of course the addition of an unlockable Easy Mode, and a Hard Mode, Pokemon Black and White 2 have the best innovation for the series’ post game since Emerald brought us the Battle Frontier back in 2005: the World Tournament, a brutal Pokemon battle series that uses competitive battle rules, and pits you against old favorites from the previous games, such as Brock, Misty, and Blue from Red and Blue, to Lance and Whitney from Gold and Silver. All the 32 gym leaders, and four sets of Elite Four plus Champions are represented in the World Tournament, and the battles you have there are some of the most intense ones you will ever have had in a Pokemon game.

It all sounds so good. Add to that the smaller touches, like the new Achievements system, the save file link with the original Black/White (nothing quite as robust as Mass Effect, but still pretty good), the distractions like Pokewood Studios, and you come to the question… so what part of it is disappointing exactly?

The disappointment comes from the fact that after Black/White tantalizingly hinted at something bigger, better for the series that they were just taking first steps towards, Black 2 and White 2 seem to have stubbornly returned to the series’ old grind. Yes, they are expansive and stuffed to the brim with content, rivaled only by the absolutely massive HeartGold and SoulSilver when it comes to that. Yes, they are polished and perfect, and the ultimate iteration of the Pokemon formula.

But they are also a return to the same formula that we have had for nearly fifteen years now, a formula that the series refuses to move on from. In making a game that appeals to the hardened Pokemon veteran, Game Freak have lost almost everything that made Black/White so good- the sense of discovery in exploring a new region unlike any in the Pokemon world? Gone, because you’ve been here before. The sense of wonderment at each new wild Pokemon that appeared? Gone. Not only are the Unova Pokemon a familiar bunch now, but the healthy servings of the older Pokemon add further to the sense of stagnation. The wonderment at seeing Black and White stretch the DS to its limits with their graphical effects is also gone, since Black 2 and White 2 cannot conceivably stretch the system beyond what the originals did. And the daring and bold story of the originals, that has gone too, replaced by a plot that exists only as an excuse for you to get out there and fight Pokemon, disregarding whatever questions the original game brought up, and reducing Team Plasma to caricatures of their former selves.

It’s slightly sad. The evolution that Black/White represented is the antithesis of what Black 2/White 2, their direct sequels, represent. But at the same time, Black 2/White 2 possess uncharacteristic confidence: yes, they know they’re the same old grind the series has seen before. But they’re better, bigger than ever before, more refined and polished than any other entry in the series. You, who are a Pokemon player, got a dose of what fresh new things could mean for Pokemon with Black/White. And yes, that spirit will probably be maintained in the inevitable sixth generation that will hit the 3DS sometime in the not too distant future. But for now, and for the first time ever, it’s good to be back where you belong: home, as the Pokemon series, for the first time in fifteen years, acknowledges you, the fan, the Pokemon player that has been there since the beginning and now knows the games inside and out.

This game was reviewed on the Nintendo DS.

Here are seven things we want to see in Black/White 2, seven things that might just make the upcoming sequel a game worthy of the franchise’s name and worthy of the predecessor.

Enjoy, and leave behind your feedback in the comments section below.

Proper continuity

Being a direct sequel to Black and White, there obviously will be continuity here. But how well Game Freak manages that will also be very important in deciding the fate of the game. Will we see more of Team Galactic? Will we have to collect all 8 gym badges again? What’s gonna happen to N (more on this later)? There are just so many plot threads that need to be continued in Black/White 2, plot threads that will not only affect the story progression, but how the game plays out. Let’s hope Game Freak gets it right.

More cinematic

Pokemon Black and White had sweeping camera angles, awesome bridges and cities to show off from impressive angles, some great cutscenes- and not just by Pokemon standards-, and other things we would never had imagined to see in a Pokemon game before. With Black and White, Game Freak proved that they are ready to experiment. We’re hoping we see more of the cutscenes and the new, awesome camera angles Black and White 2 as we did in 2010.

HeartGold/SoulSilver UI

We loved Pokemon Black and White, but we will never understand why Game Freak removed the awesome touch screen interface that was incorporated in HeartGold/SoulSilver. The interface of HG/SS was awesome- one touch, and you could do all the fundamental stuff that was required in a Pokemon game- no using buttons and long winded menus. Everything was clean and crisp, and HG/SS were perhaps the first and only Pokemon games to make good use of the touch screen. We want Black/White 2 to see the return of the same interface- we don’t care if Game Freak changes it at all, because it was perfect as it was. Just bring it back.

]]> https://gamingbolt.com/7-things-we-want-to-see-in-pokemon-blackwhite-2/feed 1 79609 https://gamingbolt.com/10-things-we-want-in-pokemon-generation-6 https://gamingbolt.com/10-things-we-want-in-pokemon-generation-6#comments Fri, 12 Aug 2011 12:43:16 +0000 http://gamingbolt.com/?p=38978 The Pokemon series is Nintendo’s most important franchise, probably. Because while no other franchise Nintendo owns sells systems as much as Pokemon does, Pokemon also carries the entire handheld market on its shoulders. Recently, though, Pokemon was in great danger of loosing its relevance, its fun, its appeal. Developers Game Freak rose to the occasion magnificently, and they gave us Pokemon Black/White- the best Pokemon games ever (some might still say Gold and Silver are the best ones). Everything about Black/White was perfect- the addictive, deep, fast-paced gameplay, the wonderful characters, amazing production values and, for the first time in a Pokemon game, a significant story that actually mattered to the experience and cutscenes.

However, there still were a lot of things we wanted Pokemon Black/White to do which they did not. We still feel there is a lot of room for improvement. Listed below are seven things we want to see in the next Pokemon game. Enjoy the article, tell us what you thought of it, and what you want to see in the next Pokemon game via your comments below!

Larger focus on story 

Pokemon games have never, ever been about the story. Yes, each Pokemon game has a little bit of a story, but they’re nothing more than formalities, and it shows that the developers don’t think they’re important. Yes, Black/White had larger focus on story, and actually had a good story, not just by Pokemon standards, but the Pokemon universe is capable of so much more. With so many criminal organizations, such a rich universe, and so many frigging Pokemon, even the most mediocre writers can come up with good stories, and Game Freak are no mediocre developers. We’re hoping Black/White was just a test run, and that we’ll get the real thing in the next Pokemon game.

Multiple regions

Ah, how well we all Pokemon fanatics remember the first step we took into Kanto in Pokemon Gold/Silver. It was bliss, to walk into a region we know so well, beat the gym leaders all over again and then the protagonist from Pokemon Red/Blue, i.e ourselves. It was what made G/S/C the perfect game- two regions, 251 Pokemon and two full fledged quests. We want Pokemon Generation 6 to go back to what made Generation 2 so special. We want 2, or more than that if possible, regions in the game, preferably Johto, Hoenn or Unova- yes, we don’t want something like the Sevii Islands, or the Battle Frontier. We want a full fledged region to explore again. Come on Game Freak, that much you can do, hopefully.

Improved battles

One major complaint everybody has had with Pokemon games for a long time now is how static the battles are, how sucky the battle screens are and how they kind of bring down the quality of the game. We want Pokemon 6 to have proper battle screens, with Pokemon properly attacking each other with full animations, not just twitches or jerks, and if we cannot have battles in real time environments, we’d at least like properly built battle backgrounds. For five generations, we have had virtually the same battle system, and it’s about time Game Freak did something about it, because they’re starting to look dated now.

]]> https://gamingbolt.com/10-things-we-want-in-pokemon-generation-6/feed 119 38978 https://gamingbolt.com/there-were-little-of-original-games-at-e3-this-year-pokemon-director https://gamingbolt.com/there-were-little-of-original-games-at-e3-this-year-pokemon-director#respond Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:53:59 +0000 http://gamingbolt.com/?p=37623

“This year, FPS war games were trend,” Pokemon director Junichi Masuda in a blog post about his E3 impressions (via Siliconera). “A lot of splatter scenes!! Blood spread everywhere. Shooting a lot, killing a lot.”

“The game developer seems get used to ‘kill’ the target. Therefore, I felt ‘how to kill’ became a focus of developing game. For that reason, target become zombie and alien…

“These targets’ savage attack and human counterattacks… It became savage contents and you never know. Mmm… It is the player who choose the game to play. As a game creator, it is little sad!

“Majority of the games look like a same game. There were little of original games. I felt a sense of crisis with above part.”

The English is… a little incomprehensible, but you still get what point he’s trying to make.

Let’s backtrack, and start at the beginning, though, for those of you who may not have any idea what Pokemon really is, or for those of you who only know it as a billion dollar, media spanning enterprise that is the biggest franchise in gaming today. Look beyond the anime, and the yearly movies, and the trading cards, and the plush merchandise, and what you are left with is a series of exceptionally strong role playing games, that has always been the premier software line on handhelds. The Pokemon games, at their core, are basic JRPGs, and they reflect a lot of the conventions of that genre in their design, replete with countless random battles, turn based battling, experience based leveling up, exploration of secret dungeons for loot and secret characters, and more. To any layperson who takes a casual glance at the series, that is what the Pokemon games will appear to be- heavily simplified JRPGs, made to appeal to the broadest possible demographic.

What a casual glance cannot tell you is that Pokemon are also strategy games, perhaps some of the finest around. There are six hundred and forty nine different Pokemon species available for capture, and each of these can be recruited to be a part of your party. Each Pokemon species can be affiliated to up to two Pokemon elemental types, which range from the obvious (such as Fire, Grass, Water, Electric) to the somewhat more ambiguous (Fighting, Dark, Psychic). Each elemental type is strong against some other types, and weak to others. A Pokemon’s type (or type combination, in case it has more than one type) determines what Pokemon it will be strong against in battle.

Each Pokemon can also learn up to four moves. Moves themselves are also affiliated to one of the seventeen types, and if a Pokemon uses a move that is of the same type as itself (that is, if a, say, fire Pokemon uses a fire move), then it gets an attack bonus. Moreover, moves are also classified into Physical (involves the attacking Pokemon making direct physical attack with the opposing Pokemon), Special (involves the attacking Pokemon damaging the opposing Pokemon without any physical attack) and Status (involves the attacking Pokemon causing some kind of stat change). The effect of each move on the attacking and opposing Pokemon is governed by the six stats that all Pokemon have- Attack, Defense, HP, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed.

Head spinning already? That isn’t even half the story told. There are infinite other things that add more complexity to battles, such as equippable items, weather effects, Pokemon abilities, and more. Pokemon battles are incredibly complex, and require thorough training and foresight and planning to be mastered properly. The best part, though, is that the game eases the player into each of these concepts so gradually that by the end, the player will have mastered all of them, but won’t have realized the immense complexity of it all.

The question, of course, is, why do the games focus on Pokemon battling at all? Well, the series focuses on children living in the Pokemon world, on a quest to not only catch all the monsters, but also to train them in Pokemon battles (which are what I suppose can only be termed as an acceptable form of cockfighting), to participate in the world Pokemon championships and become the champion. To do so, the trainer- that is, the kid who’s catching and training Pokemon- must challenge eight different Pokemon League certified gyms throughout the land, to be qualified to participate in the tournament. Most of the times, along the way, the kid has repeated encounters with the local terrorist group that seeks to use Pokemon to further their own nefarious ends.

The reason that I have spent so much time in establishing and explaining the template of the Pokemon games is because it is largely the same in  every game of the series, including Pokemon Black and White. To the newcomer, then, the above paragraphs should serve as a basic Pokemon 101 guide, although they are by no means comprehensive. What with the series adding new features and elements to the game incrementally with every major release, the formula of the Pokemon games has grown, been refined and perfected over the years, until last year’s Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver, which represented perhaps the ultimate refinement of every single feature that the Pokemon series has had over the years. The problem is, it has also grown somewhat too bloated and stagnant, and the series was in major need of some fresh air. Pokemon Black and White, with their back to the basics approach, don’t exactly reinvent the wheel, but they do give the series just the adrenaline shot it needed.

Here we go again.

For starters, let’s be clear on one thing- structurally, the games are still the same as the previous entries in the franchise. If you were really hoping to play as a member of the evil organization, or be a gym leader or a Pokemon breeder, then you’re in for some disappointment. Pokemon as a series thrives on refining and perfecting the same formula, making it feel just new enough each time to warrant a purchase and yet keeping it comfortingly familiar. With Black and White, things have been mixed up, but just enough to make these titles feel refreshingly new. Part of this comes from the fact that the game features all new monsters, and none of the older ones. This forces Pokemon veterans to actually play with the new menagerie of creatures, as opposed to instantly going after old favorites, which, in turn means that they are forced to learn about these new monsters. It’s an exciting thing, trying to figure out what type the Pokemon you’ve just encountered is, trying to figure out which of your moves will work best against it, and it evokes the same kind of feelings that players must have had when they were playing Pokemon Red and Blue.

What also adds to the games feeling fresh is the new region, which is without doubt, the best region to have appeared in a Pokemon game till date. And I mean that in more ways than one. From a geographical perspective, Unova is diverse, with lush forests, sprawling cities, rural settlements tucked away in some unsuspecting corner, and sprawling bridges. From a gameplay perspective, this probably represents the best world design that Game Freak have ever come up with, with the world having tons of secrets meticulously tucked away, and posing significant challenges to the player at every turn, without the need for the game breaking Hidden Moves that were required to progress in the earlier games.

Yep, you heard that right. Whereas this game still has HMs- seven of them, in fact- none of them are needed to progress in the game (except for Cut, which needs to be used once very early in the game). The only thing you’ll need them for is to access secret legendary Pokemon and hidden areas and dungeons. This means that you can finally concentrate on both, your progress through the game, and bringing up a well rounded team without having to worry about having an HM decoy Pokemon that drags your team down. This, along with the fact that TMs are now infinite use, leading to customizable move sets that fans have always wanted, do wonders for the game.

The makers of the game however, evidently realized that the star of the show is not the main character, or any of the surprisingly well developed supporting characters (more on that in a minute) this time around, but rather, it’s Unova. I say this this because they clearly went to excessive lengths to present Unova to the player in a way that leaves a lasting impression. With dynamic camera angles, close ins and zoom outs, 3D cutscenes and panorama sweeping camera pans, Unova is sure to leave an impression on your mind.

The changes in the graphics aren’t just limited to the overworld alone, however. After more than a decade of being stuck with Gameboy era slide show battles, Pokemon battles have finally been given a makeover, and while it isn’t what we would have liked, it still makes for a nice change from the static affairs that we’ve been stuck with so far. In battles, your Pokemon are constantly moving around, wagging their tails, ears twitching, legs bounding, and they in fact even respond to status changes- a sleeping Pokemon, for instance, will have its eyes closed. The camera now zooms in and out at dramatic moments, giving the player a better feel of the battle, and this, accompanied with the new improved attack animations, makes battles actually look impressive for a change.

Bridge porn! No, seriously, there’s like a dozen different brdges in this game, all shown off in painstaking detail.

However, all of these new aesthetic changes do not bog the speed of the battles down. Players of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl probably remember how frustratingly slow battles were in those games, often dragging out for thirty, forty minutes at a stretch. In Black and White, the entire process has been streamlined with some long overdue changes. So, for instance, you no longer have an animation for the arena weather effect at the end of every turn anymore, but the effect is represented by a small icon on the touch screen. Every time you attack, the opposing Pokemon’s HP meter does not slowly go down to zero like in the previous games, but flashes down instantly to the new HP level instantly. Animations in general have been sped up. This causes the battles to feel reinvigoratingly fast, and represents the game’s design philosophy at large- that of streamlining the overly bloated mechanics to a manageable whole.

This isn’t just limited to battles- for instance, some of the peripheral gameplay mechanics, like berry growing and egg breeding, now take a back seat and are more or less absent from the game until after the main quest has been beaten (which takes a harrowing forty hours). The multi pocketed bag of previous Pokemon games is gone, and we are now left with four pockets- items, medicine, TMs and Key Items. The PC box count is down to eight, and entire menus can now be assigned to the Y button, for ease of access and use.

However, while the game at large has been streamlined well- and by streamlined, I don’t mean dumbed down, as the term has come to mean these days- the menus and interface of this game have taken a baffling step backwards. Players of last year’s HeartGold and SoulSilver will remember that Game Freak more or less perfected the menu and interface design with those games. The menu was always accessible on the touch screen, so you didn’t have to waste time pulling it up by pressing a button, for instance, and more than one item could be hotkeyed, including one to the touch screen, in addition to always on Running Shoes. Well, all of that is gone now. The menu has to be brought up by pressing X (though it can still be controlled with the touch screen once you’ve done that), and you always need to press the B button if you want to run. And while several items, and entire menus, can be assigned to the Y button, you still need to pull up a menu, scroll and select an item or menu. This feels like a step backwards, and also makes you question why the other unused buttons- L and R for instance- weren’t used for anything at all.

But where the interface feels like a step backwards, the game definitely makes leaps and bounds forwards with its story. As all players can attest to, Pokemon has never been about the story, with the plots for the game being laughable at best, and that has changed to a certain degree this time around. This is apparent from the very beginning, as the game adopts a more character and plot driven approach from the get go. The story is now involved with Team Plasma, a group of activists who want all trainers to free their Pokemon, as they believe that humans enslaving Pokemon for their own good is morally wrong. They raise interesting ethical questions and issues, and the game deals with them lightly enough, to make you feel uncomfortable and to put the entire premise of the series into question. How the question is resolved is something I will not reveal, but suffice it to say that what they say is often disturbing, and that feeling never quite goes away.

Better than the story are the characters, from your two best friends, the victory obsessed Cheren, to the bubbly Bianca, who runs away from home to become a Pokemon trainer against her father’s wishes. However, the best and most enigmatic of them all is the mysterious individual known as N, whose motives remain unclear even after he declares his true allegiances, and Ghetsis, the smooth talking man who has something more to him than meets the eye, something sinister.

Of course, with this newfound focus on the story and characters comes a new focus on the presentation of the game. As already explained, graphically, the game leaves no stone unturned, and is perhaps amongst the best looking DS titles till date, which is fitting considering that it is also the last major release planned for the system. However, it is in the sound department that this game truly shines. The music in Pokemon Black and White, from the surprisingly innocent rival battle theme to the rocking remix of the gym music, to the techno jazz Team Plasma battle theme to the nostalgia inducing Elite Four battle theme to the effervescent themes assigned to each of the cities and routes, is undoubtedly the best in the series so far. And whereas I know that most people simply turn the volume down when they’re playing on their handhelds, please, do yourself a favor and get yourself headphones. The music in these games deserves it.

Baby it don’t matter if you’re Black or White

Also what is good is the fact that the ambient sound effects, first introduced in last year’s HeartGold and SoulSilver, are back, although they are much more subtle, and they blend in with the environment more. What is even better is that the Pokemon cries now finally sound like the cries that animals would make, rather than sounding like some weird, distorted, mutated, twisted eight bit cry of torment. This is true, at least, for all of the new Pokemon- bringing in the older Pokemon into the game (which you can do once you’re through with the story mode) means that the older Pokemon will still sound jarringly ancient and perplexingly annoying.

Speaking of the new Pokemon, the new designs definitely take some getting used to, but they are, by and large, very good. The legendary Pokemon look BA as always, but it’s the regular Pokemon where the game simultaneously demonstrates its shining creativity and its flat out laziness. From imaginative designs like Sawk and Timburr and Snivy and Emboar to the flat out stupid ones like Vanillite (an ice cream cone. No, seriously), Klink (Two gears. What. The. Duck.) and Trubbish (a bag of trash. No, I mean it) , this bunch has them all. While these monsters still don’t top the original 251 Pokemon, they’re better than most of the crap that Generation Four threw our way, and that’s a bit of a relief.

Thankfully, you can import your older Pokemon from the DS Pokemon games into these ones once you beat this game’s long story mode, which clocks in at more than forty hours. This excessively long play time means that this game gives you more bang for your buck than almost any other console title released these days. But there’s more! In addition to the full featured single player mode, Pokemon Black and White have the most full featured online and local multiplayer mode for any Nintendo game, Pokemon or otherwise, till date. There’s finally random battling online, and the GTS returns in a much improved form, allowing for negotiated trades. The bulk of the online options are still accessed via Friend Codes, which is a shame, but the local multiplayer shines thanks to the new IR support that is native to these games, which allows for much faster local battling and trading without having to go to a Pokemon Center (yes, I know!). All of this ensures that Black and White will be firmly lodged in your DS game slot for years and years to come.

It basically boils down to this- Pokemon Black and White are the best handheld games ever. They are also quite obviously the best Pokemon games ever, better than even Gold and Silver, and the most full featured yet accessible titles in the series to date. Where Pokemon will go next is anybody’s guess, especially seeing how the developers seem to be running out of ideas for new creatures, and how the 3DS will afford them with all the power of a home console, but that doesn’t matter- Black and White remind you why you would care in the first place, they remind you why handheld gaming is still relevant. Surprisingly poignant and touching, epic and grand in scale, fun and familiar, new and old, Pokemon Black and White is a game that any and every self respecting gamer should go out and buy immediately.

This game was reviewed on the Nintendo DS.

This weeks UK Charts show that the just released Pokemon Black & White have taken the top spots this week.

Pokemon White is the one in the number1st, while Pokemon Black took the 2nd spot.

Check out the full list below and see for yourself:

Top 10 (week ended March 5)
01. Pokemon White (Nintendo)
02. Pokemon Black (Nintendo)
03. Fight Night Champion (EA)
04. Bulletstorm (EA)
05. Killzone 3 (Sony)
06. Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision)
07. Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft)
08. FIFA 11 (EA)
09. Dead Space 2 (EA)
10. Wii party (Nintendo)

Source

GamingBolt’s review for Pokemon Black and White will not go online until after the game has been released. There are, of course, several reasons for this- Pokemon Black and White are incredibly deep and complex games, and the single player portion alone takes nearly seventy hours to finish. And finishing the main story mode isn’t even half of it, as not only does the game proper begin after the story mode’s been done, but Pokemon Black and White have the deepest, richest after game since the legendary Pokemon Gold and Silver. Given the sheer number of extra things to do in this game- local co-op, online battles, sidequests and minigames, trading, importing all your Pokemon from your older games to the newer one- and well, I think you can clearly understand why we need some time with this little baby before we can conclusively tell you how good (or bad) it is.

In the meanwhile, what we can tell you is that Pokemon Black and White are very, very special games. How special? Well, without giving away anything, let’s just say that these games have the potential to topple Pokemon Gold and Silver from their lofty perch. Yep, I just said that.

For the final word, look out for the review. We hope to have the review for Pokemon Black and White up before 11.59 PM on the 11th of March, Central Time. In the meantime, I seriously suggest you guys go back and play through the DS Pokemon games one last time. It’ll be your last opportunity to bid farewell to an era that lasted nearly fifteen years.

What promises to be the biggest release of next year- at least commercially- is all set to launch exclusively on the Nintendo DS and DSi handheld video game systems on March 6th.

For the uninitiated, Pokemon Black and White are the newest releases in Nintendo’s long running flagship series for its handheld game systems. These represent only the fifth main installments in the series, but they have been promoted as a ‘complete overhaul and reboot’ of the traditional Pokemon conventions.

While not much is known about these games, we do know that these games feature expanded online functionality, that they have an increased focus on the story that is much more morally complex, that they feature only the new Pokemon and none of the older ones until after the Pokemon League, and that the two versions will actually differ from each other substantially this time around.

If you want to know more about Pokemon Black and White, feel free to check out our previous coverage of the titles.

In the meantime, I have a much more pertinent question that I hope you all will be able to answer- since the 3DS is due to launch in the US in March, but since now Pokemon will most likely be Nintendo’s main focus during that month, what do you think will happen to the 3DS launch? Will Nintendo push it back to April? Or pull it back to February? Or will they foolishly decide to launch both the 3DS and Pokemon in March itself? Sound off in the comments section!

[Nintendo Press Release]

207 million copies sold worldwide. Just take a minute to soak that number in. Two hundred seven million. More copies of Pokemon games have been sold in the world than there are people in any nation on the earth, barring four. In fifteen years, the Pokemon series of video games has come within touching distance of overtaking Mario, Nintendo’s other flagship franchise, which, at nearly thirty years old, is the highest selling game franchise of all time. Although not for much longer, if Pokemon has anything to say about it.

Legions of detractors of the franchise, who called it a fad when it exploded upon the scene in the late ’90’s, would have you believe that the series is dying out, and that it will never again post numbers as it did in its heyday. Yeah… no. Pokemon Black and White, the latest installment in the series, was just released in Japan last month, and it has gone on to sell more than four million copies in that time frame, with at least 1.5 million of those sales posted during the game’s first three days on the market. In the last one month, Pokemon Black and White have sold more copies in Japan alone than Halo: Reach has sold worldwide. If that isn’t representative of an absolute stranglehold on the retail video games market, then frankly, I don’t know what is.

More numbers can attest to the fact that the series is only moving from strength to strength. Pokemon Black and White became only the fifteenth game(s) in history to receive a perfect 40/40 from Japanese magazine Famitsu. The previous major entry in the franchise, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, went on to sell in excess of 16 million copies worldwide. If we add in the sales of Pokemon Platinum, the director’s edition remix of Diamond and Pearl, then the total goes up to beyond 20 million. Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver, 3D enhanced remakes of the GBC classics Pokemon Gold and Silver, have sold over 10 million copies in little over a year.

So yes, Pokemon isn’t close to dying out. It’s anything but, in fact. However, even the most fanatic Pokemon fan would be unable to deny that over the years, the series’ penchant for just incremental changes to the successive entries in the series has led the games feeling largely stale. The entire premise is the same every single time- as a young aspiring trainer, you set out to beat the eight gyms that lie all over your country, to be eligible for the Pokemon League, that competition of the most elite of all trainers. Along the way, you attempt to catch and catalog every single existing Pokemon species for your friendly resident Pokemon Professor, and also defeat an evil organization that is trying to take over the world using the wondrous powers of Pokemon. It’s all routine by now, and with the same plot and settings, the same locales (in essence) in every game, and the newer Pokemon designs appearing increasingly uninspired, the entire trudge through a new Pokemon game begins to feel largely pointless- how many times can you play through the same game again?

Clearly, a complete reboot was in order if the series was to survive. With the Sinnoh+Johto saga firmly behind them, Game Freak set out to create the most ambitious Pokemon game till date…

EVERYTHING’S DIFFERENT AND EVERYTHING’S NEW, EVERYTHING’S FRESH ALL OVER AGAIN

Forget everything you know about Pokemon. None of that matters in Pokemon Black and White. The series represents a complete reboot of the franchise, discarding all but the most tenuous links the game might have had with its forebearers.

That is evident from the get go. The moment you boot the game up, you can see everything’s changed. No longer do we have a happy ‘Welcome to the World of Pokemon!’ or ‘It’s A Whole New World We live In!’ intro clips, something seems to be different this time. The intro video is showing someone being crowned king… of what? It shows clippings of Pokemon watching intently… why?

Pokemon Black and White is the most story focussed entry in the Pokemon series yet. It actually takes its plot seriously, and while it doesn’t tinker with the established formula all too much (you still have eight gyms to take down), it brings a dramatic new twist on nearly everything else. No longer do we have a stereotypical evil organization bent on taking over the world. Instead, we are confronted with a certain Team Plasma, which seeks not to exploit Pokemon, but to free them from human control. They are headed not by a deranged one dimensional criminal mastermind, but rather by a shadowy and intriguing figure acting from behind the scenes known only as N.

The changes are immediately apparent. Once you’re through with the intro movie, the game starts with a cinematic zoom in of a quaint town, which is the starting town in Pokemon Black and White. And immediately, the increased focus on dialog and story come into light.