Movie Gifts - The new Lovely Kiss Nidorans

Coming soon, to a theatre near you according to Bulbapedia, are four special Pokemon - three shiny gerbils and a fateful encounter Celebi. In addition to unlocking that one event in HG/SS, they all have new toys that nearly caused me to kill a Skitty upon finding out about them.

And the gerbils are all shiny, if you're into that sort of thing. But anyway...

Raikou: Zap Cannon, Weather Ball, Aura Sphere, Extremespeed
Entei: Flare Blitz, Extremespeed, Howl, Crush Claw
Suicune: Sheer Cold, Aqua Ring, Air Slash, Extremespeed
Celebi: Leaf Storm, Recover, Healing Wish, Nasty Plot.

"I'm killing Skitty right now!"

Let's look at this for each one:
Raikou: Zap Cannon is functionally useless in a world with Thunderbolt TMs (Voltorb Flip notwithstanding), and Extremespeed gives him a little bit of priority. Weather Ball is fun for Rain teams and even Hail teams (100 base Ice! Suck it Gliscor!), but oh mama, Aura Sphere. Ghost + Fighting is still resisted by little to nothing... and the ones that can take Shadow Ball + AS don't like getting Thunderbolts to the face.

Entei: I have to say, the fact that they're playing to this very blog with Crush Claw is amusing enough (hey guys, it's supposed to go to Dunsparce). Still, Howl makes Extremespeed and the long-awaited Flare Blitz extremely potent - so the question is, who's your physical Fire, Entei or Arcanine? Entei has Stone Edge and Iron Head, but Arcanine has Intimidate... hrm.

Suicune: Probably comes out of this with the least - let's face it, Sheer Cold is BANNED YOU *redacted* in most serious battles and it needs Extremespeed the least. Still, Aqua Ring could be a real pain in the rear on something with these HP/defense stats, and Air Slash is nice for coverage if nothing else. (So much for Ludicolo stalling it out).

Celebi: It only gets one new toy, but what a toy it is. The question is, does Celebi have the defenses to pull off more than one Plot before it gets hit with one of its multiple weaknesses and dies or BPs out of there? It's too bad Celebi doesn't have a tail, though - flavour-wise, Nasty Plot is one of the last moves you'd expect to see on Celebi.

This is part of the joy of post-release content for Pokemon, though - this may be the craziest post-release thing we've seen since those fateful Valentine's Day promos in New York that led to the existence of Lovely Kiss/Horn Drill Nidoking back in the GSC days. Or Eevee with Growth. Or Bubble Magikarp. The problem with all of this goodness is that because of the mandatory Shiny on the gerbils, their natures are locked in as well. And it's not known what nature that's going to be.

Basically, what this comes down to is this: If Raikou is stuck on something stupid like Bold, it's a stinkbomb waiting to happen.

Donald and Kozuki vs. Excessive Level Grinding

So I've played through all 16 badges of Heart Gold now and hit a massive roadblock - one that's going to require either more grinding that should be allowed by law, or me busting out my Action Replay for an emergency supply of Rare Candies.

The situation? I'm going to get slaughtered by Red if my party holds as it is.

Kallen (my character)'s team is as follows:

Butterfree (Rakshata): Bug Buzz, Psybeam, Gust, Sleep Powder
Utility, sleeper.
Electivire (Akatsuki): Thunderbolt, Thief, Ice Punch, Earthquake
Surrogate Electric killer, is going to get me a Light Ball when I eventually fight Red. Currently packing Fire Punch in that slot.
Scizor (Gurren): Bug Bite, Bullet Punch, Rock Smash, Strength
It's a freaking Scizor, with Technician. 'nuff said.
Houndoom (Seiten): Flamethrower, Dark Pulse, Thunder Fang, Nasty Plot
Venusaur killer
Starmie (Gekka): Surf, Ice Beam, Psychic, Grass Knot
Fills in holes on the team, beats Charizard and puts a nice dent in Blastoise/Lapras
Hitmonlee (Burai): Hi Jump Kick, Earthquake, Blaze Kick, Rock Climb
Need Rock Climb to get to him, need HELLOJUMPKICK to get rid of Snorlax

The problem is, they're all L56.


Red's LOWEST Pokemon is L80.

Localized Walls of Text

First of all, the giveaway went as well as can be expected. That is to say, I gave myself everything over again but nobody else had a Pokemon game with them or already had them. (Hell, one of the guys had a freakin' Yu-Gi-Oh game with him. No, he was not a freaky fish guy. In America.)

I did end up getting both - Heart Gold was pre-ordered in full, Subpar Silver by way of swapping Rhythm Heaven (because I have no rhythm) and the first Layton game. In what can be only described as the worst trade since Kessel for 2 1sts and a 2nd, I also traded my unused Pearl and basically unused PBR for the first guide and $7 off the second.

Now that we have the North American versions, I can update the original review of the Japanese version with the stuff I didn't get to the first time...

The Pokewalker
Two MILLION steps? Are you frakking insane?

With that said, I'm actually using it quite a bit. Not for catching things yet - I'm trying to build up to 100,000 watts so I can get all of the Pokemon out of it, which by my estimation will take anywhere from two weeks to two months depending on how many walks I can justify. It's actually forced me to change my routine at work though - I'm on the 11th floor of a 18-story office building, so on breaks or lunch I go down to the ground floor, walking around the office complex and getting a good tour of the downtown. All while leveling up (random Pokemon here).

The times I've dared to use the Dowsing Machine or encounter Pokemon it's mainly been vendor trash - Geodude, Slowpoke, and Oddish with the more common items. I'd like to go back and get some of the rare stuff, but again, you need the Watts to unlock the courses - and the one you really want ("easy" Spiritomb, Feebas, etc)  is 100,000 Watts at 20 steps each.

Probably the most annoying thing is that if you level up to a point where you would learn a move, you miss the move. Whoopsie. Good thing I got to Blackthorn already, or that would really be a problem.

Oh, and I like how there's already people trying to cheat the Pokewalker. It's called running, folks. The only one I support is a dryer, tumble with no heat. Don't do what someone I know did and try to wash it, though. $10 for a refurb after shipping is not fun.

Voltorb Flip

"I miss the Game Corner already. Card Flip comes off like a high-risk Picross demo." - my 12:30am tweet on 3/16

 This was the first impression I got when arriving in Goldenrod and throwing a fit when I couldn't buy the coins for Dratini or TM 35. It's a tricky game at first until I was able to get a handle on the strategy for it - but it's still freaking annoying when you're up at L6 and get dropped because you misclick a bomb.

The strategy for it is summed up pretty well in this FAQ, and I'm not going to recreate it here. Just next time Pokemon Company, please include an option to buy coins. If you can afford it, then you deserve the rewards - and there's no gambling involved if the reason for taking out the slots was truly for the sake of avoiding the "gambling references" ESRB descriptor.

Also, it's dangerous to go alone. Take this.

Other Stuff
- As predicted, Dialga is a gamebreaker. I actually stopped using it after it sat back and laughed at Whitney for about 10 minutes straight before Dragonbreathing it to death. (Though to be fair, I ditched my entire team at that point for eggs).

- 1, 2, 3, 1, 2 still works for Extremespeed Dratini even when you know what the actual answer is.

- Now that I understand what they're saying when you talk to the Pokemon following you, I can actually somewhat tolerate it. Just do yourself a favour - don't look at your dragon's Orb the wrong way, or it may be YOU getting Dragonbreath to the face. Wonder what would happen if it was say, a Thick Club Marowak?

- I realized recently that there are actually five families that are post-National exclusive despite being in the Johto Pokedex - Porygon, Sneasel, Houndour, Electabuzz and the one I forgot... Slugma. Now do you see why I thought it was only four families?

- They kept Donphan in Gold, so these are remakes of the Japanese versions as I suspected they would be. So the final score is still 8-3-2 Heart Gold in the version exclusive race. So much for "Superior" Silver, right GAF?

- I am this close to setting up a Twitter feed for my Gold trainer. Watch this space.

The (Ingame) Winners and Losers of HG/SS

The 4th gen mechanics have caused a severe altering of everything you ever knew about the ingame Pokemon. Aside from ones that are now showing up ingame for the first time, certain monsters are now suddenly usable - or no longer usable. The major culprits for this of course, are 4th gen mechanics and the sudden lack of elemental punch TMs, as you'll see...

The final Heart Gold/Soul Silver review

If a Pokemon game's story can justify a spoiler warning, there will be spoilers. Viewer discretion is advised. This review may contain language that may be offensive to young children and 2nd gen fanboys.

When starting Diamond and Pearl, the player is greeted by a television report discussing a Red Gyarados. The minute this was revealed, the speculation for a GSC remake went from non-existant to ludricrous speed. Nostalgia blinded everyone to the flawed execution of the second generation games and ??? was promoted as some sort of good character.

This wouldn't be the first time this phenomenon was observed amongst the hoi paloi of the Internet Pokemon Community (IPC) - after all, we saw this same pattern played out after Ruby and Sapphire's release with Fire Red and Leaf Green. The key difference is that in the 3rd generation, the remake was followed up by a canonical 3rd version for the true 3rd gen games (Emerald for Ruby and Sapphire) which was a superior experience in practically every area. The same thing happened in the 4th generation, except they got the order backwards and put the best game of the generation out before they put out the remake.

That isn't to say that Heart Gold and Soul Silver are bad games, but once you've had Scizor it's hard to go back to Heracross. What remains is what 2nd generation should've been crossed with a 5th generation tech demo.

Heart Gold-Stopping Design Insanity (or: "How The PokeGear Ruined Everything")

Now that I've had a chance to dive further into Heart Gold/Soul Silver (13 badges at the time of this writing, looking for Chanseys due to my mild OCD about getting everything at the first opportunity), I've noticed some things that are driving me batty during the playthrough.

First of all, among the buyable TMs are Return, Dark Pulse, Taunt... and STEALTH ROCK. Yes, for the low low price of $2,000, you too can have the move solely responsible for preventing me from using entire types of Pokemon in PvP!

Now, I realize that this isn't going to stop most people from using it, since anyone who needs mass quantities of TM76 could've played through the first badge on a second game and traded it over, or is playing on a simulator. Still, at least that prevented casual use until now. This is probably the nastiest purchasable TM since Double Team was available (for $1000, by the way) in the halcyon days of RBY.

 Next is the new (or old) Itemfinder. In trying to chase down the Machine Part, the thing was bloody useless - maybe the instructions will make more sense when I can read them in something other than Japanese, but I eventually had to resort to running around the Cerulean gym like an idiot jabbing A. At least with the Dowsing Machine, you can eliminate a lot of space in one touch if the item doesn't appear.

But probably the most irritating thing is everything that goes in the Pokegear. The radio was functionally useless in the originals except for catching Snorlax, so I can understand adding something to it. And they did, in the form of the Hoenn and Sinnoh sound stations. A good idea and probably better than the Poke Radar, which I've gone on record as wanting to break a developer's legs over. But why restrict it to a day of the week for each? I'd rather not waste an appointment space on my phone's calendar that says "Catch Bidoof today", and I doubt anyone else would either. Make them each post-National stations and I'd be a little happier at using the radio to charm a Pokemon. (Or build the GB Player and this into a "pPod" item and kill two birds with one stone.)

I also prefered the Poketch Marking Map to using the PokeGear Town Map for legendary Gerbil and Lati tracking. Sure, it's just two additional button presses, but it's a lot easier to just have the map there and have it auto-update than hit the menu every time. Of course, it appears that these games are tech demos for the 5th gen engine, so we'll probably be stuck with this for the forseeable future. (Of course, they could just not have roaming Pokemon, but what do I know?)

The thing that really grinds my gears, however, is the return to the phone system instead of using the Vs. Seeker for rematches. Look Bug Catcher Wade, I don't give a flying fadoo that you beat a Bellsprout... I just want to know when you bothered to level up your stupid Caterpie so I can KO them while grinding my Mareep. (yeah.... stupid Bellsprout.) Although getting the calls from Mom that she bought me type-resisting berries - thanks to her, I've got enough Yache Berries for an entire platoon of Garchomp - and other hold items, it'd be just as easy to have the guy in the Poke Mart when I walk in.

Again, this is something that may be remedied after the localization - and unlike the originals, you can ignore the call by going into the menu. But if I need to grind at the endgame, I'd like to be the one who controls the timing for the rematches. Emerald was sorely missing this feature, and these games are going to feel the same way.

Other quick hits:

- I never realized how much Mareep relied on the elemental punches until now, especially Fire Punch. I finally had to get rid of it for Magnemite around Ecruteak City because if something's going to take up a slot in my party with its only usable attack being Thundershock, it can at least have a boatload of resistances.

- The relative hatred of Fire-types continues unabated. Houndour still is Kanto-exclusive pending a nightime visit to the new Safari Zone, Typhlosion is going to have the same problems Mareep did (not learning anything beyond its own type until high levels) and I couldn't find a Magmarizer anywhere. And Flareon's still a comedy option, before you ask (especially when it comes at L5 now).

- Miltank has Scrappy, which means it's still going to put a dent in Giratina with STAB attacks. Next time I get a chance, I'm using Dialga for native Stomp/Rollout resistance and Attract immunity.

- Lance broke out Pokesav again - LEVEL 40 DRAGONITE. At least Rock Slide is legal on Aerodactyl this time.

- I brought home a massive haul in a 2+ hour run to the Safari Zone - among previously unattainable-in-Johto Pokemon were Murkrow, Misdreavus, Mr. Mime, and Larvitar. I really hope someone goes into detail as to what can be done with the customization, since it may throw the concept of a version exclusive out the window.

- Modest Ho-oh on the 3rd Poke Ball. Hells yeah.

Quick and dirty HG/SS release thoughts

Normally Pokemon games get their street dates shattered about a week before release, but Heart Gold and Soul Silver managed to go until the day before release before getting squirted out to the teeming masses.

And between Smogon, Serebii and Pokebeach, we now know 80% of what's going to show up in an FAQ sometime around April of 2010. There's some things I like about the remakes... but the amount of sickening fanservice in this game makes me wonder just how far shoved up their nostalgic ass we have to go.

First...
The things I like:









The Gravity tutor.

Legends and even STARTERS from previous generations available. Now all we need is the Ruby/Sapphire dongle Pokemon catchable.

Gym Leader fights that pose a challenge, assuming we can ever get to them.

The delicious tears that flow because people STILL haven't figured out the easy mode to beat Whitney's Miltank (it's called Geodude, guys...)

Being able to rape the game in half and stuff it through a mailbox (IGN.com) with the Origin Form Giratina learning everything before L50. (Even Aura Sphere.) If you have a Movie Arceus, this game is officially a speedrunner's dream.

Aqua Jet/Belly Drum Azumarill being legal for a few hours (then again, this happens every time).

Death to the Defog HM. (Of course, Whirlpool... yeah...)

Togepi not only has an attack when you hatch it... it's Extrasensory.

Kanto is actually a usable continent, pending the release of the wild Pokemon locations.

The things I can do without:

The Gym rosters staying largely the same or regressing (see: Whitney). Couldn't they have at least given Bugsy Ledian and Spinarak? And Clair getting Gyarados just makes it easy mode.

Pokemon following me. And it sounds like you can't turn it off. I'm sorry, I just found that annoying in Yellow (and evolved my rats as soon as they learned Thunderbolt so I could get rid of the things) and now that I CAN'T GET RID OF IT... I'd say more, but Penny Arcade sums it up quite well, I think. Unless they start finding Master Balls.

Raising a Caterpie to Butterfree. I might have to adjust the ingame monsters list as I forgot just how much of a pain in the tukus it is to get to Butterfree in the first place. Still, 98% Sleep Powder...

The rumored tutors (priority moves ahoy) falling through, and no expansion to Rapid Spin... yet they found room to make String Shot a tutor. String Shot. I wish I was making this up. Without question, the worst tutor move ever.

Most of the Johto Pokemon still being stuck in Kanto (Houndour, Murkrow, Larvitar, etc) while I have to trudge around without a Fire type for the nth time.

And probably the one thing that makes me irrationally angry... the GB Player. Maybe it's because I play with the volume at minimum so I can listen to podcasts and such, but the fact is they devoted programming time to 1999 graphics and sound to appease people who are living in the past. That's time they could have devoted to, I dunno, making Chikorita not suck.

But this is the hand we got dealt, and I suspect my clean game is going to end up as Soul Silver while I run through Heart Gold whenever I'm really bored and not beating the best Pokemon game of this generation (Platinum).

Update to the Platinum Location guide and news musings

I've submitted an updated version of the Platinum Location guide to GameFAQs, which should go live on Monday. It contains the following:

- A rollup of a lot of typo corrections and filling in some missing "other method" information (mainly that I missed Route 226-230 pretty badly for swarms/Pokeradar information). HT to The Mattinator @ GameFAQs for also pointing out that I've been spelling Kirlia wrong for the last SIX YEARS.

- Added in a section where I explain how to regenerate legends in Platinum. I'm pretty sure this is a new feature for Platinum, but I'm not sure.

Speaking of new features, there's been a lot of news recently hitting about GSDS, so let me get some quick hits in:

- So Kyogre/Groudon AND Rayquaza are going to be catchable? Can we get random Latis so I can throw out Ruby and Sapphire? In all seriousness, I get the feeling as the release date nears we're going to find out that Lotad, Seedot et all are going to be version exclusive, they're going to open up Cerulean Cave so we can catch Mewtwo... basically, they're going to make it so DSi owners aren't completely boned as far as finishing the Pokedex goes (as long as they have friends with Pokemon, which sums up Japan in a nutshell).

- The movie Arceus unlocks Dialga, Palkia, or Giratina at L1. Watch them come with their orb and the other two Pokemon's special moves (as I rub my hands in glee at the mere thought of a Spacial Rend Dialga...)

- Jirachi's new toy (Draco Meteor) makes it the first Pokemon to resist the move while learning it except for Arceus-Steel. Good for a gimmick, anyway.

- I have to ask: Is the 1st-slot Pokemon following you going to be a menu option? Sure, I'm going to have Lucario out in front for a while to lure all the furries into shotgun range, but it's going to get old after a while.

- It may take the PokeWalker to get me to raise something to L100 this gen, because you don't need to otherwise. (btw GameFreak, if you could bring the auto-L50/L100 options to local wireless play, that'd be great).

- Bulbapedia headline: "(site) reports HG/SS will include Kanto". Not exactly a big story. Now, if they DIDN'T include Kanto, even Iwata would hear the fanboy rioting as he goes to his daily swim through the piles of 10,000 yen bills at NCL. In fact, there's a part of me that kinda wishes they left Kanto out and blew out Johto. But as it stands, the streak of Kanto being playable in every gen continues. Fire Red/Leaf Green remakes for 5th gen confirmed?

Pokedex design for fun and profit

There's been a lot of hand wringing since the remakes were announced as to what the Pokedex is going to contain. Since the split Pokedex is practically guaranteed, let's go inside the numbers for a second and see what we can determine. For our purposes, let's assume it's required to go to Kanto.

The baseline for the number of Pokemon in the Johto Pokedex is 130 - that's the number of Pokemon between Chikorita and Celebi, plus any Pokemon you need to get the Pokemon through evolving or breeding. There are certain families that are going to appear because they always do - the Red Gyarados means Magikarp and Gyarados are going to have to appear as a story event and the families that always appear will probably continue to. So yes, you get to be sick of Tentacool all over again.

But that brings us to 147, and Diamond/Pearl caught no end of flak for having only 150 in its regional dex. Certain Pokemon have counterparts, though - the Oddish line has the Bellsprout line, Miltank needs Tauros until they create a calf in the 5th gen and they're probably going to need some Pokemonn to balance
out the ones that only appear at specific times or to stock the Bug Catching Contest.

So how do we get a decent number for Johto (somewhere around Platinum's 210)? It's actually pretty simple. Take the New Pokedex from the originals and toss out the Pokemon you had to bring up from the 1st gen games - 9 starters, 5 fossils and five legendaries. Celebi won't be required as an event, so that gets us to 230. I'm sure we can find 20 Pokemon to toss out to bring it down to 210 while still keeping the Gym Leaders well stocked just by looking at older Pokemon that didn't show up until Kanto anyway.

Here's who I'd ditch:
The Rattata family, the Nidorans, the Diglett family, the Ponyta family, the Doduo family, the Grimer family, the Cubone family, Kangaskhan and Mr. Mime.

By tossing out 20 Pokemon that are either redundant or were original Pokemon that didn't show up until Kanto, you get to a clean 210.

But one concern that's been brought up - what to do with the evolutions or baby forms for these Pokemon that came in since? Consider for a moment that there's 20 existing Pokemon that have evolved or formed a babby since the 2nd gen. Are we going to re-create the scene in FR/LG where you literally could not trade in a Pokemon from outside until you got the National Dex, even if it came from another remake? Probably, if they want to recreate the GSC experience as much as possible. So what do we do?

There's actually a clean solution for this, though. There's 5 babies and they require an item to create. It's a lot easier to breed in the post game, so if I was in charge an item I'd put the breeding items post game and simply exclude the babies from the Johtodex. That brings us to 225. You can take 3 out from Magnezone, Leafeon and Glaceon since they have to be in a specific location to evolve. Leave the Dubious Disc in Kanto, since Porygon2 might be as good if not better than PorygonZ (especially if you go by their Twitter feeds) and put the move returner in Kanto for Piloswine's evolution and you have 220.

Of course, if they choose to deny the existence of the other evolutions I can understand too. I just want to rip stuff up with Togekiss in-game.

This is all my own opinions based on past actions in remakes and my limited knowledge of Pokedex design.
Edited 5/21/09: Forgot Tangela/Tangrowth

Did we need Heart Gold and Soul Silver? Really?

So despite my best efforts at misinformation, Yahoo Japan and Nintendo decided to announce that yes, they are remaking Pokemon Gold and Silver for a release in the fall in Japan, with the inevitable NA release probably next spring.

I used to have a running tally in my signature on the GameFAQs boards that added two weeks every time someone asked for a remake, and I tried to convince myself (and people on The Twitter, Joystiq et al) that Nintendo was more interested in trolling the obsessive fans and would end up releasing something more appealing to their expanded audience. Like Hey You Pikachu DS or Pokemon Channel 2.

But they went ahead and did it anyway. And as someone who played the second generation games more than would be healthy, I'm not sure if I'm happy about it.

Let's look at what great innovations the second generation brought:

- Events based on time of day and the day of the week
- The split of the Special stat into Special Attack/Defense
- Dark and Steel types
- Two regions in one game
- The coolest Pokemon
- Running legendaries

All of these things are either gigantic pains in the ass or were refined to be much better in the newer games. Having the clock worked out well until it killed the game's internal battery.

The Special stat, although pretty meaningful in the long run (it made Mewtwo only slightly broken instead of being a proto-Arceus) was upstaged by the split of moves in gen 4. There were barely any Dark and Steel types, and those were sacked away until the endgame anyway (Tyranitar, Houndoom, and Skarmory was a version exclusive).

Running legendaries were old the minute Raikou took off - they're supposed to be rare, but it shouldn't take me five hours or cloned Master Balls to get these things. And not only is it questionable - and unlikely - that they'll use the Crystal storyline so Suicune's going to be running around, but if the trend of making the GBA games unneeded (largely because of the DSi) continues the Latis will probably be running around in the post game too.

The coolest Pokemon? Purely debatable, and I spent most of the time on my original playthrough using Alakazam, Golem, Machamp, Lapras and Fearow to rape the game in half and stuff it through a mailbox (@igndotcom). Notice anything? Not a single GSC Pokemon. There were maybe ten usable families debuting in GSC plus a couple of trade evolutions, and they've spent two generations evolving everything else to make it usable. Feraligatr's good now because of the physical/special change giving him Waterfall and Ice Fang/Punch to play with, but Typhlosion's a one-note gimmick and Meganium is outclassed by everything, for one thing.

And finally, the concept of two regions in one game has done nothing but set an unnecessary expectation that sets off a torrent of bitching all over the internets and offline. If they had held off on doing it for one generation, it could have been done so well - and you would still have the prior games if you wanted to go to Kanto. As a result, the developers ran headfirst into the limitations of a dual GB/GBC game and the end result was two inferior continents. The description of the 2nd gem games as a half-assed Johto paired with a 16th-of-an-assed Kanto might be unfair to the developers, but the complete lack of branching (Johto) and a point (Kanto) is pretty clear.

Hell, there's more post-game content in Platinum, which has a whole 2.5 cities, 6 routes and the Cheating CPU Frontier. That little island has more content than Kanto, which can literally be beat start to finish in an hour and a half. (30 minutes if you Dodrio Mode it through Pokemon Stadium 2).

So the question becomes, am I going to buy the remakes? After all, when Diamond and Pearl came out, I pre-ordered both of them, one version each at two different places. I think I've figured out my plan of attack, though - especially as if I do end up getting them I'll probably end up FAQing them out of force of habit.

If there's a significant amount of content added - enough that both regions are anywhere near Sinnoh-sized - then I'll end up pre-ordering one (Gold, because I got Silver in 2000 and want something different) and hoping Best Buy re-runs the deal they did in Canada for Platinum where you get the player's guide for free. Because let's face it, 624 page guides are cool. Otherwise... we'll throw a Garchomp at the bridge when we get there.

Still, I can't help but wonder what the 5th generation would have if they took all the effort around remaking games and focus it on making a good 5th generation. Or maybe they'll bring in a Flare Blitz tutor Flareon can't use and not evolve Farfetch'd again.

It's not going to stop me from speculating about the remakes here either.