Return to Sinnoh with Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

As foretold by prophecy… and a month in review coming up segment… my daughter and I each found a Pokemon title for our Switch under the Christmas tree yesterday.  She got Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and I got Pokemon Shining Pearl, the remakes of the 2006 Pokemon titles that moved the series off of the single screen GameBoy hardware and onto the new Nintendo DS devices.

Diamond and Pearl remade

That is where we started our Pokemon journey when, in anticipation of another long airline flight to Hawaii, my wife sent me out to buy a DS and a few games to keep our daughter occupied on the trip.  I spent a lot of time with my then young daughter reading the things she could not yet manage and became enamoured with the title myself and ended up with a Nintendo DS Lite and a copy of Pokemon Diamond for myself.  That cobalt blue unit, which I still have on the bookshelf behind me, and which still runs just fine, might be the best piece of hardware I have ever gotten from Nintendo; compact, with a sharp screen and a long battery life, it was a nice design.

Of course the question is whether of not, after nearly 14 years, my daughter and I can find joy in a Pokemon title that is an echo from the past.

Pokemon Diamond and the DS Lite

The Switch Lite isn’t the DS Lite, or even my handy 2DS XL.  It is larger, a bit awkward to hold, only has a single (if much larger) screen, and has noticeably less battery life than any of the DS series units we have owned.  (And still own.  In addition to the DS Lite and 2DS XL I mentioned there are also a couple of 3DS XLs, a DSi, and DSi XL somewhere around here.  I just need an original model DS to have the foundations of a DS museum.)

Honest Game Trailers goes after the game pretty hard for being a remake without much in the way of change.

And there is the odd art style which tried to capture the charm of the original pixel-focused art style in a high resolution format.  Here is what it looked like back then.

Pokemon Diamond back in the day

And here is a glimpse of it in the remake.

Into a Switch rendered Sinnoh… also, you can do screen shots on the Switch

But you know what?  It is all working for me so far.  The charm, the light story where an ten year old child is allowed to wander the world with just a kiss on the cheek and a “stay safe!” from his mom about two minutes into the game… as compared to the ponderous, goes on forever intro to Pokemon Sword & Shield…  and the rather simple game play, that is all a bonus for me.  I am happy with it.

There are, of course, a few changes.  The mechanics of the switch demanded some, so your Poketech smart watch now grabs the corner of the screen as opposed to owning the second screen on its own.  Experience share is now party wide by default from the start, as in Sword & Shield, rather than depending on the experience share item being held by a single Pokemon.

We will see if that spirit lasts.  The pandemic times have also been the years of the remakes for me, with things like WoW Classic, Burning Crusade Classic and, Diablo II Resurrected, all of which I have enjoyed to some extent.  Why not some old school Pokemon?

I am already in possession of the first gym badge, so I will have to see how far my daughter and I get.

Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl Launch Today

The day of the remake of the original Pokemon Diamond & Pearl has finally arrived.

Sinnoh is returning

For me this remake has been a long time coming.  It seemed like it was going to be the next after Game Freak finished up their work on Pokemon UltraSun & UltraMoon in 2016.  There was a cycle to their releases.  But after that… and after I bought the new Nintendo 2DS XL… the word came that they were done with Pokemon on the that hardware.  The Pokemon era with the DS series was over.  Pokemon would be moving to the Nintendo Switch hardware.

That reset the schedule as Game Freak first put out a light Pokemon title, Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee, before committing to a full blown Pokemon RPG title in with Pokemon Sword & Shield.

Sword & Shield set a new standard for Pokemon titles, running through two DLC expansions as the story wound through the Galar region.

I bought and played through some of Sword & Shield, having purchased a Switch Lite, but it didn’t really stick with me.

Now though, there is the return to the Sinnoh region, which is where Pokemon began at our house, back when we bought our daughter a pink Nintendo DS Lite to keep her occupied on regular flights to visit family in Hawaii.  Watching her play got me invested and soon I had my own cobalt blue DS Lite, a solid piece of hardware that is still sitting on my bookshelf.

We played through that game together, bought the guide books, battled the gym leaders, caught and traded Pokemon, built bases in the underground, and caught the legendary Pokemon.  It was the gateway to us playing through almost all of the titles that came out on the DS series. (We bought them all, though I don’t think either of us finished UltraSun & UltraMoon.)

I am not running out and buying it today.   Well, I might buy it soon, but I will be buying two copies and saving it for the holidays.  We’ll see if my daughter and I can find some time to play when she is home from school.

Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl Coming November 2021

We heard back in February that the next Pokemon title for the Switch would be remakes of Pokemon Diamond & Pearl, something my daughter and I had been waiting for.  As a follow on, we have now been given a date for the launch of the remake.

Sinnoh is returning

The launch date for Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl is November 19, 2021.

The Nintendo site has an updated descriptions of how they plan to recreate the original Nintendo DS experience and what to expect.

In addition, the other upcoming Pokemon title, Pokemon Legends: Arceus also got a launch date this past week.  We will be able to experience this “bold new direction” for the Pokemon series come January 28, 2022.

So we have some old and new Pokemon experiences coming up.  I am definitely up for Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, though I hope the release doesn’t overlap too closely with Diablo II: Resurrected.  While we don’t have a firm date for the Diablo II remake, it was said that it would be available near the end of 2021, and no studio wants to launch after Christmas, so November seems a likely time for it as well.  We shall see.

A Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Remake At Last!

My daughter and I have been hanging on and waiting for a remake of Pokemon Diamond & Pearl for several years now, so we were both pretty hyped up when the announcement finally came.

Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl will be a thing in 2021.

Diamond and Pearl remade

There are a few reasons that we’re feeling some hype for this.

The first is, of course, that Pokemon Diamond & Pearl is where we started playing Pokemon games back in early 2008.  It is the foundational experience for us with the series.

Then there is the fact that the Pokemon remakes tend to be pretty good.  HeartGold & SoulSilver might be the titles I spend the most time with in the series… the one time I caught them all… and OmgaRuby & AlphaSapphire were great remakes with a ton of depth.

And, as I said, we’ve been waiting for this remake for a while now.  There has been a pretty well established pattern of remakes over the years, and Diamond & Pearl now sit as the oldest titles in the series that have not had a remake.  They are due.

We expected them to be the next title on the Nintendo 3DS hardware after Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon back in 2017.  Then GameFreak announced that they were done with the 3DS hardware… just after I bought a brand new 2DS model… and it was off to the Switch platform, where they first had the Let’s Go, Pikachu! & Let’s Go, Eevee! titles in 2018, rather light fare compared to where the core RPG stood at the end of the 3DS era, before giving us a full blown entry in the series with Sword & Shield in 2019.

I now have a Switch Lite… my daughter and I both do… and we played through some of Sword & Shield.  It was a solid entry in the series, but didn’t really grab us and neither of us finished it out.

But now, with Diamond & Pearl coming back, we’re ready to give it another go.  The ship date is currently slated for “late” 2021, which I am hoping will put it before Thanksgiving, or at least before Christmas.  Then my daughter will be home on break from college and can perhaps find some time to play with the old man.  Watching the trailer, I am surprised at how much I remember from the old game.

Nintendo also announced Pokemon Legends: Arceus today as well.  Due in 2022, it is a new style of Pokemon adventure set in Sinnoh like Diamond & Pearl, but in an earlier era.  As Nintendo put it, first we get the re-make, then we get the pre-make.  Details on that were somewhat scanty in comparison, but in its trailer it looks to be an open world style game, akin to the Legend of Zelda titles, which is not a bad thing.

This all comes as the Pokemon franchise is celebrating its 25th anniversary.  That is covered, along with a more information about games and events, in the Pokemon Presents video from today.

So there is plenty to look forward to on the Pokemon front it seems.

The Next Pokemon Release Will Be…

My guess is that the next Pokemon title will be a remake of Pokemon Diamond & Pearl.

Pokemon Diamond & Pearl is where I joined Pokemon

And when I say “next Pokemon title” I mean the next release of the core RPG game that runs on the Nintendo handheld platform and not some subsidiary title riding on the Pokemon fame like Pokemon Snap or Pokken Tournament.

So why remake Pokemon Diamond & Pearl?

The core Pokemon franchise has been one of patterns over the years.  They are not always consistent, but they seem reliable enough to give one insight into what might come next.

The pattern started off with a release of a pair of titles… Red & Blue, Gold & Silver, Ruby & Sapphire, followed by a third title that represented a revision of the initial pair, respectively Yellow, Crystal, and Emerald.

Once Nintendo moved from the GameBoy and GameBoy Color to the GameBoy Advance and then the DS hardware, GameFreak used that as an opportunity to remake titles.  So Pokemon FireRed & LeafGreen, HeartGold & SoulSilver, and Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire came to be, reviving old locations and old foes (and already existing Pokemon) on new hardware with new features.

Having recently released a pair of titles set in a new location with new Pokemon being added to the Pokedex, it seems logical that the next title they go with will either be a remake of a past title or a third title to go with Pokemon Sun & Moon.

There are actually rumors of a Pokemon Stars out there, rumors that even I have heard, and I don’t pay much attention to much outside the official press releases for Pokemon. But that name sure fits the theme.

However, the rumors seem to be about this title coming to the Nintendo Switch as opposed to the 3DS platform.  If that is the case, it doesn’t count in my book.  Meanwhile, the whole “third title” pattern seems to be in decline.  The last true “third title” was Pokemon Platinum.  Pokemon Black & White got a Black & White Version 2, which stayed in the same region but which was a different story line, so that was sort-of a third (and fourth) title, but not in the spirit of past releases in that mold.  And then Pokemon X & Y, the first 3DS-only title, got no follow on third title, even though they had a Pokemon setup already for feature in a possible Pokemon Z.

Because of this, I think third titles might be out for now, which leaves a remake as an option.  So when I went to look for the oldest Pokemon generation that had yet to be remade, Pokemon Diamond & Pearl was the result.

Pokemon Diamond & Pearl seems about prime for a remake.  It came out in Japan over ten years ago, and is coming up on its ten year release anniversary in other regions soon.  That makes it feel like it is about due, as previous remakes were of titles 8-10 years in the past.

One difference however is that you can still play Pokemon Diamond & Pearl on the current 3DS hardware.  The flip side of that though is Nintendo looks to have stopped shipping the DS only titles, likely because the infrastructure to support those games, the old Nintendo WiFi and such, has been dismantled. Nintendo is up there with EA in closing stuff down as soon as the next title comes out.  So while you can find copies at Amazon or eBay, but they aren’t on the shelves at Target, WalMart, or Toys R Us for a reason.

And when it comes to that Pokemon Bank integrated National Pokedex of which I wrote last week, there is no official way to buy Pokemon Diamond & Pearl (and Platinum as well) in order to obtain the full range of generation 4 Pokemon.  And, unlike the Pokemon Black & White games, even if you have a copy you can’t get your Pokemon straight into Pokemon Bank.

Of course, there is another alternative.  Since Pokemon Diamond & Pearl already runs on the current 3DS hardware, Nintendo and GameFreak might decide to simply spruce the titles up a bit and put them in the Nintendo online store as Virtual Console titles the way they did with Pokemon Red, Blue, & Yellow back at the 20 year anniversary of the franchise.  Then it would be back to the old school look.

Pokemon Diamond back in the day

That wouldn’t be horrible.  I might buy a copy if they included Pokemon Bank integration, which I am sure they would would.  But I would really rather have a remake title the way they have done in the past.

No matter what is coming next for the Pokemon franchise, I bet we won’t hear an announcement until autumn.  I will just have to wait to see if my guess is correct.

Pokemon – Into the Blue

My relationship with with core Pokemon RPG games on Nintendo handheld systems began about eight years ago with Pokemon Diamond and the Nintendo DS Lite hardware.  That is my foundation point when it comes to the series, my intro and indoctrination into Pokemon.

Pokemon Diamond and my DS Lite

I obviously enjoyed the game as I have come back for every new version of the game… eventually… since that time.

But starting when I did, the game had already been in play and evolving for twelve years, through three generations and a remix of the original games.  Or I assumed it was evolving.  So when the series hit its 20th anniversary back in February and released virtual console versions of Pokemon Red, Blue, & Yellow, I saw this as a chance to explore the origins of the series, to get the feel of how things were back in 1996 when the whole Pokemon thing was just starting.

Old games come to the Virtual Console

When they came out my daughter said she wanted to play Pokemon Red… though I don’t think she has even launched the game yet… so I went with Pokemon Blue.  I thought about Pokemon Yellow for a bit, but decided against that because it was a revision that came later and might be different enough to matter.

So I downloaded it and off I went.

The first thing I want to say is that it runs very well and looks better than I expected.  Yes, my 3DS XL has more than enough horsepower to run an old GameBoy game, but the GameBoy also had a wee 160 × 144 pixel LCD display.  The upper screen on the 3DS series is 400 x 240 pixels, so I was a bit worried that Pokemon Blue might end up tiny to look at even on the bigger XL display.

However, they appear to have scaled it up well so it fills the screen vertically in emulation.  The game also looks good.  I was wondering how a 4 shade gray scale game might end up looking on a color screen.  The graphics are better than I expected and quite readable.  I don’t even have to put on my reading glasses to play, though first version Pikachu looks a bit more plump than the star of the series is rendered today.

Finding a pudgy Pikachu!

It also plays very well.  It is zippy and responsive and aside from the fact that I keep reflexively pulling out the stylus when ever I want to name a captured Pokemon… no touch screen in the GameBoy era, so you have to move the cursor with the D-pad… I settled into the game very well.

The surprise, for me, is how fully formed the game came out back in 2006.  The story line is the same neglectful parent letting you wander the world at the whim of a Pokemon professor named after a tree.  There is an group bent on evil that you must defeat.  The progression through the world is the same, with all the usual way points in forests or underground passages.  You get a bicycle, there is a bicycle only road, there is a tower haunted by ghost Pokemon, there is your rival, there are Poke Marts and at the Poke Center Nurse Joy hopes to see you again even though this must mean that you have injured Pokemon.  There is the safari park, a ship, and the GameFreak offices.  Pokemon gyms have themes and you sometimes have to go find the leader, and you have to go find the Poke flute in order to wake up a sleeping Snorlax that is blocking your path.

I seriously went into the game thinking I would list out all the things that were the same as Pokemon Diamond and quickly found that listing out the difference was a much better plan.  I am 6 gym badges and about 20 hours into the game and items on my list include:

• NPCs don’t have individual names
• No running shoes
• Very limited inventory space
• Pokemon daycare center doesn’t do breeding
• No personal base

That isn’t a lot. (There was more, but I can’t find the damn list I was making.)  I left out some specific things, like Nintendo WiFi, but the series seemed to have come out more fully formed than I thought it might have.  I am kind of impressed at how much stuff they got into a GameBoy game.

On the flip side of that, one of my repeated gripes about the series is that it can sometimes feel like you are playing the same damn game over and over with only minor variations.  I thought that might have just been for my eight years of the series, but it looks to be the way things have gone for 20 years now.  Talk about sticking to a formula!  There is an article on the standard aspects of Pokemon RGP game play that lays it all out.

Anyway, the lesson I have learned over my time with the series is that it usually pays to take a break between games, lest the sameness overwhelm the individual variations and nuances that each title brings to this very specific genre.  Because, while they do all feel like they start with the same basic pattern, each game does have its own flavor.  But sometimes your palate has to be clear to detect the subtle flavors.

And the initial game isn’t all that seemed to arrive on the scene fully formed.  The game took the world by storm such that before many months had passed there was an animated TV show, a collectible card game, comic books, and the image of Pikachu on just about anything you could plaster it on.  It all appeared over here in the states in such quick succession that back then I couldn’t have told you what the initial start point for Pokemon was off hand.

But it all goes back to the original GameBoy games, and it has built a pretty amazing legacy over the last 20 years.

Now I have to defeat Team Rocket, get the last two gym badges, and go face the Poke League.

Honest Game Trailers – Pokemon Diamond and Pearl

Pokemon has been around for 20 years and a day now… and I’ve been on something of an Honest Game Trailers kick this month… so here is their take on my first Pokemon title, Pokemon Diamond & Pearl.

Yes, they put names on all of the Pokemon added with this generation.

And, if that isn’t enough, there are Honest Game Trailers for:

• Pokemon Red & Blue
• Pokemon Gold & Silver
• Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire
• Pokemon Black & White

 

Pokemon Turns 20 Today

The Pokemon franchise turns 20 years old today.  It was back in 1996 that the original Pokemon Red & Green launched in Japan for the Nintendo GameBoy.

With all of the things that have come since that initial launch… an animated TV series that is nearly 19 years old at this point, 19 movies, 10 TV specials, a collectible card game that remains hugely popular, and a host of spin-off games… it is sometimes easy to forget the rather humble beginnings of it all.  I was actually aware of the collectible card game and the TV series before I ever saw the game on a Nintendo handheld.

I had a Pikachu on my desk at work back in 1999 or so, and a few Japanese Pokemon cards that a friend gave me. I had even seen the TV series a few times… hell, the seizure causing episode is a bit of cultural lore at this point.  But my own journey with the core Pokemon role playing game didn’t come until 2008.

In February of that year we were going on a trip and, in order to keep our then six year old daughter occupied on a long flight, I was sent out the obtain a pink Nintendo DS Lite and a few games.  I think I grabbed LEGO Star Wars and Mario Kart along with Pokemon Diamond as the game selection, though I could have just picked up the last one.  It was all she played on the flight both ways.

During the trip I was impressed by the Nintendo DS Lite hardware.  It was compact, solidly built, had a great screen, long battery life, and built-in WiFi support.  But more than the hardware, I was impressed with the game.  My daughter, being six, had me help read some of the dialog in the game during the flights.  That exposed me to the game sufficiently that I decided I wanted to play too.  So, for my birthday the following month, I ended up getting a cobalt blue Nintendo DS Lite and my own copy of Pokemon Diamond.

Since then I have played a lot of Pokemon.

I have binged and played through titles in focused sprints.  I have played some of the spin-off games, like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (basically a Rogue-like with Pokemon).  I have gotten burned out and let titles sit half way played for months at a stretch.  I’ve gone to watch tournaments and to download events and even a special Pokemon celebration at our local mall. I even collected them all at one point.

There are currently 133 Pokemon related posts on the blog, all under the Pokemon category.

The hardware has changed.  The DS Lite screen seems so small now… I used to be able to read it without glasses… and I have a Nintendo 3DS XL to play on these days.  The graphics have been updated.  But the basics of the game haven’t changed all that much.  And I am still looking forward to the launch of the next games, Pokemon Sun & Moon, which were officially announced yesterday.

But this is where it all started for me.

My Pokemon Diamond and old DS Lite this morning

Now to decide which one of the three originals I want to grab from the 3DS store.  The obvious choice is Pokemon Yellow, because Pikachu.  But that also seems like the safe choice.  Plus it is in color.

Download Mythical Celebi at GameStop

Nintendo is running their Pokemon Black and White Tour currently, and one of the attractions is the ability to download a special Pokemon to your copy of Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, or SoulSilver, the Mythical Celebi… who I guess isn’t all that much of a myth if you can just download it.

Mythical Celebi

However, the Pokemon Black & White Tour is only visiting a few cities over the next few weeks.  So that Pokemon fans not near those locations won’t miss out on everything, Pokemon.com has announced that from February 21st through March 6th of this year, GameStop will be hosting the same Celebi download event that is accompanying the tour at all of their US locations.

Download Celebi – Meet Zorua

Downloading Celebi and transferring it to Pokemon Black & White will allow you to meet (and capture) the Pokemon Zorua.  That Pokemon is otherwise unavailable in the game.

This is an in-store only event.  You must got to a US GameStop store during the dates listed to be able to download these Pokemon.

However, since it is an in-store event, you will be able to download these Pokemon to Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold and SoulSilver.

As usual, all of the details are available at Pokemon.com.

The Last Weekend for the Shiny Pokemon Download at GameStop

The last of the shiny Pokemon download events, part of the build up to Pokemon Black and White, ends this weekend at GameStop.

The final shiny Pokemon, Suicune, is available to download through this coming Sunday, February 6th.

You appear to need all three shiny Pokemon for Pokemon Black and White.  When you transfer them to Pokemon Black or White you will unlock the ability to catch the new Pokemon Zoroark.  Zoroark will otherwise not be obtainable in the game.

And, while you are out on your download mission, you might as well stop by your local Toys R Us to download Ash’s Pikachu.  The download event for Ash’s Pikachu runs until February 13th.

Go Pikachu!

That will then be followed in some areas by the Pokemon tour.

And then, finally, Pokemon Black and White will ship on March 6th, at which point we can actually sit down and play the game!