As I mentioned in Friday’s post, this past weekend there was a special Pokemon event at Toys R Us. The following ad (click on it to see full size) was in the paper, on the Toys R Us web site, and on the Pokemon.com site, the official center for all things Pokemon, where it was the main banner ad:
Reasonable coverage for a popular game like Pokemon. The news of it founds its way to me by a couple of routes, including my wife seeing it in the Toys R Us ad the week before.
Of course, my daughter and I wanted to get this rare Pokemon.
But when should we go to the store?
I had visions of some sort of Burning Crusade/iPhone mania happening outside of the store, people lining up early and a long wait.
Not being one for waiting in line… or getting out of the house before noon on a Saturday unless I have to… my daughter and I ended up leaving for Toys R Us at about 1:30pm.
And there was no line.
No crowd.
Just a typical Saturday afternoon at Toys R Us as far as I could tell.
Perhaps there was a line-up at noon when the event started, but by the time we got there the traffic was pretty light.
We walked right in and over to the electronics area of the store where there was a medium size sign with instructions on how to access the wireless distribution of Darkrai. You basically download it to your DS and then find a special delivery guy in game to retrieve it. Very easy, and we both quickly had Darkrai.
We did see a few other people show up with their DS for the event, but the most common comment I heard while we stood around the sign was, “I didn’t know about this,” usually followed up by a wish that they had their DS along with them.
While we were there I also picked up a copy of Pokemon Battle Revolution for the Wii, since I understood that most of its power as a game is only available to those who have Pokemon Diamond or Pearl. When we last tried it, we did not have that capability around the house.
I also picked up a copy of Pokemon Emerald for the GameBoy Advance.
I was actually a bit surprised to see that all of the Pokemon games for GameBoy Advance (GBA) were still on the shelf in quantity, though, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have been. Not only can you still play all of those games on the DS, but in order to fill out the National Pokedex in Diamond and Pearl, you pretty much need access to all of those games. Some Pokemon only spawn in Diamond and Pearl when you have one of the GBA Pokemon games inserted into the front slot of the DS, while other Pokemon you have to migrate from one of the old games.
My daughter, of course, liberated Emerald from me almost immediately and began playing it, getting through the second gym leader before the weekend was out. She is already catching Pokemon I want to migrate to Diamond.
So we spent another weekend playing a lot of Pokemon.
And Darkrai? Well, for a Pokemon who supposedly can push around Dialga and Palkia combined, he is kind of wimpy. But at least we have him now. Only about 250 more Pokemon to go for National Pokedex.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 