Archive
12/14/06 Even Coronis makes mistakes
So, today, on the release date of Pokémon Battle Revolution, various things have happened.
The first is the obvious: Pokémon Battle Revolution was released, and thus we have the official site for the game (as opposed to Game Freak's section about it). Of course it's in Japanese so I don't understand a word of it and can't tell you what's on it, but it has a couple of what I'm fairly sure are new videos, if essentially showing things we've already seen before (the starters attacking). If you're not brave enough to click random Japanese links, they're on this page, and to view them you need to scroll down just past the image of the starters and click one of the headings with the gray background in the gray-outlined box, which will cause a screenshot from the video to appear. To make it actually load and play, you need to click the yellow button below the screenshot. Just in case that wasn't obvious.
The third video, where Enperuto attacks, is especially interesting, because unlike the one we saw before where it was attacking Goukazaru with Surf in a single battle, now we see Surf hitting in a double battle (where, admittedly, it appears that Goukazaru's partner has fainted), and thus get to view its tweaked double battle effect, namely that it hits the partner as well. We see the screen split in two, showing Rentoraa on one side and Goukazaru on the other, and then both are hit by the approaching tidal wave. They even got the orientation right: Surf hits Rentoraa from behind, not from the front. We can also see Rentoraa rendered in the background on Goukazaru's screen as well. Nice.
It doesn't appear to me that there is any other content of interest that we haven't seen before there, though. Oh well.
Now... Coronis of Serebii.net posted today with a little new info and apologies for some mistranslations and misinformation that they found on Japanese websites and took for granted. (See now why I put all the D/P stuff on a special minipage called "The Cave of Speculative Theories" with excessive warnings about the dubious truth value of it all?) The new stuff includes:
- In D/P, when two Pokémon with Shadow Tag are facing one another, switching is allowed. Prevents the dreaded Wobbuffet-vs.-Wobbuffet Struggle matches.
- The Tower Tycoon is the rival's father - which I think we admittedly all suspected, considering they have nearly identical hair.
- The Download ability causes your Attack or Special Attack to increase, whichever the opponent is more vulnerable to. Handy.
- Slow Start, Regigigasu's ability, halves Attack and Speed for the first five turns of battle.
- Technician, a new ability given to Scyther and some other Pokémon (fwee, Scyther :D), multiplies the power of attacks with a base power lower than 60 by 1.5. This has some interesting connotations that you don't notice at first - for example, this means (well, assuming that 60 base power attacks get the bonus as well) that a Pokémon with Technician can have 90 power Hidden Power if its personality value gives it technical base damage of 60, instead of the conventional 70 which is the normal maximum.
- The Dry Skin ability, aside from increasing HP in rain and decreasing it when it's sunny, will also cause the Pokémon to take more damage from Fire attacks and be healed by Water attacks. Is it just me, or do they just LOVE making Fire types pwn Parasect a little more each generation?
- Flower Head (which Coronis now appears to translate as Flower Gift), aside from changing the form of the Pokémon, boosts Attack and Special Attack to 1.5 times their normal value during Sunny Day.
- Psychic Dream allows the Pokémon to see the opponent's strongest attack at the beginning of battle, in terms of base damage. If more than one attack have the same strongest base damage, a random one will be picked to show you.
- Nature Power now generates different and all the more useful attacks: Grass yields Seed Bomb, sand yields Earthquake as before, caves yield Rock Slide as before (I think it was Rock Slide before too, anyway), swamps yield Mud Bomb, water yields Hydro Pump, snow yields Blizzard, ice yields Ice Beam and indoors yields Tri Attack.
- The attack Treasure (130 power, 100% accuracy, no negative side effects) does not require you to use up all the PP in your other attacks, but only to use them all at least once. I find this a little funny - makes the attack broken, don't you think? - but ah well.
- Feebas is found in a misty lake on Tengan mountain, and like in R/S/E, it appears only in a few tiles - here four. However, and this is the nasty part, the tiles change every day. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
- Hurl, the attack where the user throws the item it's holding at the foe, will have various side-effects depending on the item held, like how they flinch with King's Rock, get paralyzed with Light Ball, poisoned with the Poison Orb, burned with the Flame Orb, stats reset with White Herb, etc.
But the things they initially got wrong...
- This is a little older, but the "two new natures" infamously reported on every Pokémon site among some of the first D/P info do not actually exist.
- Tangela and Tropius, whose locations they had previously reported, are in fact the only Pokémon aside from starter and legendaries that are unobtainable on D/P and therefore need to be traded from the Advance games.
- HAHA, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT BAD LUCK. It was a mistranslation; the ability actually is called "Strong Luck" and makes the opponent likelier to receive critical hits, not the user. Absol, Murkrow and Donkarasu are supposed to be bringers of bad luck, not just plain unlucky. Although I don't see why it should be called "Strong Luck", then... o.o Isn't it a matter of making the opponent have bad luck, rather than them having strong luck?
- The attack initially reported as being named "Mighty Guard" and raising the user's Defense and Special Defense by one stage is actually named Crescent Dance, is exclusive to Kureseria and when it uses it it will faint but completely heal (as in Pokémon Center heal - PP, HP, status, everything) the Pokémon sent out after it. Don't ask me how those ebil Japanese sites they were taking info from managed to butcher it THAT much, but it's definitely useful, especially if Kureseria has little left anyway...
And finally... although this minipage primarily deals with the games, I feel right to report that the tenth movie has been announced, and its name is "Diaruga vs. Parukia" (well, which I must assume is a title that will be similar to "Mewtwo vs. Mew" for the first movie: I'm guessing it will end up having another title, but with "Diaruga vs. Parukia" being a kind of subtitle). I'm rooting for Diaruga. :D Although knowing Pokémon movies, time and space will just be warped and distorted because of the battle, but Ash will somehow stop the fight and make Diaruga and Parukia go back to sleep.
Battle Revolution news coming as soon as somebody who has the game puts something up. <_<
EDIT: TotalPokémon has the tenth movie trailer - I was having difficulties viewing it on the official movie site, but it works fine there. Funnily enough, the trailer shows Diaruga and Parukia battling in what looks like definite 3D to me... o.o Going CGI with the movies, are you, or is this just because this is a teaser video?
EDIT2: Okay, it looks like pokemon.co.jp's Battle Revolution site has a bunch of new videos as well. If nothing is showing in the video player, just right-click it and select Play. I think only the bottom two videos are old... Admittedly the second one, which has Ho-oh and Lugia, worries me a little, because I'm getting the feeling they're recycled Stadium 2 models... v.v
12/02/06 New Pokémon Battle Revolution info (+ Manaphy correction)
So I'm back after NaNoWriMo with updates.
Firstly, as Serebii reported a month ago *cough*, it appears that the Manaphy mission in Ranger is in fact event-only. So much for that. At least we still get our Mew/Celebi/Deoxys without events, so that's a good thing.
Secondly, there is a whole bunch of new Pokémon Battle Revolution info, the most noteworthy of which I'll go over briefly:
- The game takes place in a massive futuristic Pokémon battling station named Pokétopia. It is a feast of neon lights, and looks pretty awesome - fun just to observe. Very neat.
- It is, after all, a Stadium-type game. There does not appear to be a Story Mode. I personally am a little disappointed, but many others are rejoicing.
- However, it somewhat makes up for it by allowing your Pokémon to gain levels in the single player mode anyway - i.e. you can upload Pokémon from your DS and battle with them on the Wii to make them gain levels. This is probably the strongest feature of the game that I've seen so far, to be honest - I've been worrying for ages about how if it would be a Stadium-type game it would get really easily boring because I like raising my Pokémon a lot more than battling with them at static levels. Then you can download them back to the DS and they will have all the experience that they gained on Battle Revolution. Neat stuff.
- Rental Pokémon are back, to much fanfare.
- It features something that people have been dreaming about for years, come true in a most amazing fashion: the trainers can be entirely customized! You can store up to 32 trainers and their teams in the game. This will be fun to play around with. I'm seeing myself creating my fic characters on the Wii...
- Teams can also be simply saved onto the Wiimote and then you can bring them to a friend's house without needing your DS.
- The leader of the Colosseums has a Lucario suit that you will gain the ability to use after you defeat him. Hehehe...
- There are ten different colosseums that can have different effects on the battle. Neat stuff...
- It features realtime online battling. Yay for that. :D
Honestly, this game looks awesome, even though there is no story mode. The graphics are great from what I've seen of them, and they've got an awful lot of things we've been wishing for for years. Niiice. Now let's just hope they FIXED THE OLD POKÉMON 3D MODELS...
11/01/06 The English Names Revelation Begins, + PBR
Ladies and gentlemen, we have the English name of Shinou. Apparently, it is Sinnoh. It will take some getting used to, but hey. Now that we have the name of the region we're really getting into the whole English name deal, aren't we? Whoo. Name guessing time.
Well, we know this because Ranger is out in the US and mentions the region. Which brings us to the great news: Mew, Celebi, Deoxys and Manafi are all available without going to events in the US version! Let's all worship Pokémon USA, and hope that they don't take this awesome-w00t-yay-finally-did-something-right feature out in the European version.
And, as observant readers will have noticed, this means that inevitably, Manafi's English name would have to have been revealed as well, and so it has: it is Manaphy. No surprises there; it just retains its "official" romanization.
Source: Serebii.net
For those interested, yes, I updated Manaphy and Sinnoh's names in the Pokémon List Generator.
Additionally, we have three new Pokémon Battle Revolution videos on the official Japanese site, showing the three final-form starters attacking one another. Each one is very short - one attack and then it's done - but they do tell us a few things, most notably (and happily) that full contact is definitely in - we see Goukazaru physically attacking Dodaitosu. I admittedly don't like the way Goukazaru moves at all (it looks very awkward in my opinion), but the actual models look very smooth, and Dodaitosu and Enperuto's movement looks fine.
I'm trying to figure out that announcer we hear speaking in between. There are four possibilities:
- It's just somebody talking on the videos afterwards as an advertisement narrator thingy.
- It's an in-game announcer, but he only speaks when there is something noteworthy to report (i.e. a critical hit or a super effective hit - he doesn't appear to be speaking after super effective hits in the videos, but critical hits would be a possibility; I wouldn't know, since I don't understand Japanese).
- It's an in-game announcer, but he speaks for random attacks, not after all of them.
- It's an in-game announcer, but they simply haven't finished recording him saying the names of all the attacks yet, so he is only actually heard talking for the attacks they've finished putting in.
I think most people are leaning towards the first possibility, and I am as well. He seems to be speaking louder than the battle music and sound effects, implying he's not actually part of the game. The way he talks sounds like an in-game announcer, though. (If anybody reading this knows Japanese and knows what he's saying, by all means tell me.)
10/22/06 Elite Four Glitch
Not even a month out, and D/P has already found its Infamous Glitch (tm). We had the Missingno. trick (and Mew trick) in R/B/Y, the cloning trick in G/S/C, the cloning glitch in Emerald...
And now the Elite Four glitch.
The basic idea is that you can Surf out of the first Elite Four member's room by using Surf while facing the door you came in through. Then you're in the black area, and you can basically run around and get to anywhere you want in Shinou, from the looks of it. Then you just go to places like Full Moon Island, where Daakurai appears, or the Flower Patch, where Sheimi appears... Who wants to bet they'll find out how to get Aruseusu with this thing soon?
Now half of the Pokémon community is saying "OMG WOW I CAN GET THEM" and the other half is saying "OMG NO WHY DO THEY ALWAYS HAVE THESE GLITCHES IN THE GAMES?" How typical. Honestly, just ban 00bers from competitive play like you've always been doing and be done with it.
Try watching those video guides linked to in the first post of the thread I linked to above. They're interesting.
10/20/06 Cont'd
Sorry, my Internet went down. My first chance to finish the article from the sixteenth.
Now... we have the methods by which Aruseusu, Sheimi and Daakurai are obtained. Those are event Pokémon - the "get all the Pokémon for Aruseusu" thing was a false alarm. Now half of the people who read this will groan and the other half will cheer, but yeah, sorry. Not that everybody won't have them anyway by sharking.
Serebii has also posted the D/P items, which I've been eagerly awaiting, and lo and behold:
Sharp Claw
Raises chance of critical hit, Attach to Sneasel and trade to Evolve
As I mentioned on the first of this month, I had previously created an item named Sharp Claw which evolves a fake Pokémon I made. Ignoring the inconsistency between the report that Sneasel evolves by levelling up at night with this item and this claim that it's an ordinary attach-and-trade evolution, I did promise that I'd laugh if it raised critical hit ratio, and since it does...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Okay, now that's over with. To look at some of the other items, the Beautiful Skin is interesting; it will definitely be used a lot in competitive battling. We have Special and Speed versions of Choice Band now; we have a "Concentration Band" and "Wisdom Glasses" which just raise power of all physical/special moves (only slightly, I expect); we have a "Metronome", not the attack, which raises the power of a move if you use it consecutively; we have specialized Macho Braces which only increase EVs in one particular stat; we have an item that eliminates charging moves; we have some items that prolong certain effects that last a certain number of turns; we have a bunch of items which I can't possibly think of any benefit to (the Black Steel Orb lowers Speed and grounds flying/levitating Pokémon... the Flame Orb induces a burn to the holder, while the Toxic Orb induces poisoning, perhaps useful to activate Guts and prevent other status effects, but still... the Full Stomach Incense and Shining Tail make the holder always attack last, although that could be useful in some specialized situations...). Definitely some interesting stuff.
There's stuff about the Safari Zone up on Serebii.net as well... What I find most interesting is this part:
The grass in the Safari Zone is also incased in Mud, if you walk too slowly or close to grassless mud, you will get stuck in the mud and have to remove yourself, every time you get yourself out of being stuck, it counts as a step so be weary
They probably added that so people can't cheat the steps meter (see the R/S Tips and Tricks section on the main site). Neat idea - frustrating as it is for the player.
And yeah, that's all for now. D/P is more or less covered by now, so updates might become stray for a while.