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09/13/08 Latey McLate is late.
See, this is why The Cave of Dragonflies is not a news site. The Cave of Speculative Theories is a truly marvelous display of my amazing incompetence at news coverage. I should stick to writing elaborate theories about Pokémon genetics and huge sections of trainer data.
Okay, so all joking aside, Platinum is out. Yada yada. PokéBeach has a whole bunch of coverage on the storyline and such if you don't mind being spoiled and can be bothered to read it; Serebii.net has all the Platinum sprites (only one frame, though) in its Pokédex and various information, Serebii and Coronis have a Platinum discoveries thread at Serebii's forums, Bulbapedia has all sorts of information about changes, Marriland has pretty nice video coverage of Platinum's new stuff.
Okay, really. This game seems awesome. Some of my main observations:
- I can't confirm this for certain, but judging from Marriland's videos, scrolling through items in the bag is faster now. Here's something you didn't expect them to fix, eh? But it is obviously awesome.
- And I might be imagining this, but I also think that battling is a little bit faster. As I said, I could be imagining it, but it does look that way in those videos. And that's been a major complaint with D/P.
- One of the new characters is a detective who calls himself... wait for it... 'Handsome'. I like him already.
- You get to battle your rival immediately after you two receive your starter Pokémon again! Ah, the nostalgia. :3 Yeah, I hated how in R/S/E and D/P you don't get to battle your rival until the game has made sure you're higher-leveled. :< I want to have the possibility of losing, damn it.
- The sprites, by the way, vary - some look awesome and some look weird - but a lot of them have an uncanny resemblance to the second-frame D/P sprites, and in fact for many of them it looks like the second-frame Platinum sprite is the first-frame D/P sprite or something close. The sprite the animation actually stops at that is displayed for you the rest of the battle, however, looks different from D/P. Usually.
- Your rival seems to be all over the place now. Which could be a good thing storyline-wise, as he seemed just to pop up randomly in a few places in D/P, but I can also see it being annoying.
- The Sinnoh Pokédex, as you've probably already heard, has 210 Pokémon in it now, mostly the evolution lines of the ones that had new evolutions in the fourth generation, but also Scyther and Scizor, Absol, Houndour and Houndoom, etc.
- It follows that you can get some Pokémon much earlier. Scyther? Route 210! (Freaking YES.) Eevee? You can get it from Bebe in Hearthome City when you first get there.
- It appears that Tangela and Tropius were just Platinum's version exclusives - making this the first Pokémon game where the third version has actual version exclusives that could be obtained in neither of the previous two games.
- Speaking of version exclusives, ouch - two sets of version exclusives from D/P are also unavailable in Platinum. Diamond is thus the only fourth-generation game where you can get Stunky/Skuntank and Murkrow/Honchkrow, and Pearl the only one where you can get Glameow/Purugly and Misdreavus/Mismagius. Of coures, this isn't so bad since after all the fourth generation does have the Global Trade Center and plenty of trainers in the game will allow you to see those Pokémon, thus adding them to your Pokédex and allowing you to ask for them in the GTS. The Trapinch line is also unavailable in Platinum, it seems. Aww.
- You get both Dialga and Palkia at Spear Pillar after the Elite Four.
- Rotom has new Formes resembling various household appliances that have better stats than the original and use moves of various types (though they're all Ghost/Electric). They're awesome. And of course, random fans start going on about how "Game Freak are running out of ideas" because of this, even though making Pokémon based on lawnmowers and electric fans is considerably more creative than grabbing random animals. Why is the Pokémon fandom so crazy?
- The order of the Gyms has been changed - Fantina is now the third Gym leader, Maylene fourth and Crasher Wake fifth.
- Speaking of Gyms, a few of them have had their puzzles changed.
- Gym leaders also have neat animations when you face them in battle.
- Some trainers also have Pokéball Seals - that is, you see a fancy little display of flowers or something when their Pokémon come into battle.
- Supposedly, Surfing is no longer agonizingly slow.
- Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres (yes, all three - no starter-dependent crap) roam around Sinnoh after you get the National Pokédex! Now, that's something I didn't expect them to pull.
- You get a Togepi egg from Cynthia instead of a Happiny egg from a random Hiker. And you get a Porygon as a gift too.
- There is an extra Pokétch button to go back by one app! Thank you, Game Freak. We needed that.
- You get the Magmarizer (and then presumably also the Electirizer) as an item lying around instead of having to have a certain version in your GBA slot and hoping to steal one off an Elekid/Magby.
- You now get a house in Resort Area where you can buy freakishly expensive decorations to use there. Sort of like a fancier, private Secret Base. Should be nice when you want to waste some of your 999,999 Pokédollars.
- Swarming and PokéRadar Pokémon seem to be more or less the same as in D/P.
- Ditto now appear in the Trophy Garden, however.
- You can get into Amity Square with more Pokémon. Which reminds me, I've never gone into that place in Diamond, not even once. I need to try it sometime.
- There is a tent in the Day-Care. You can interpret that as shelter from the weather or just a place to, ahem, procreate in private without that creepy little girl staring at you. Take your pick.
- The Underground is not actually Wi-Fi-enabled, contrary to previous rumours.
And so on. Just read all that news coverage. Or not, if you want the game to surprise you. Either way it looks great.
07/11/08 Ugh, this needs an update.
Sorry I got lazy.
Okay, you probably know everything that's happened already, but to recap:
- The real Sky Forme Shaymin looks like this, is a Grass/Flying type and has the Serene Grace ability. I think this artwork looks kind of odd, but I've seen other pictures that looked adorable. Unlike some, I wasn't personally that fond of the fake Shaymin, and as I said, this one can be cute, so I'm not complaining.
- As a matter of fact, it was first seen in this CoroCoro scan. It also contains various other interesting things such as the box art (pretty neat-looking, if you ask me), an ominous picture of Mt. Coronet with a cloud of shadow above it, new and warmer clothes for the protagonists (although Dawn can clearly still wear a miniskirt despite the supposed climate changes in Sinnoh), a screenshot of you walking sideways in the rather messed-up "Torn World", the place that Giratina comes from (and the only place where it can be used in its Origin Forme), two mysterious new characters on top of a screenshot of Eterna City (the one on the left is apparently a member of Team Galactic while the other one is a police officer), another screenshot of you walking into a castle of some sort, and stuff about how Shaymin automatically turns into its Sky Forme when traded to Platinum.
- This scan is just cool. And has a screenshot of Dialga and Palkia at Spear Pillar, etc.
- This scan shows one of those Sky Forme Shaymin being cute pictures (along with a bunch of Butterfree, yay), a couple of screenshots showing new sprites of both the Origin Forme and Another Forme of Giratina as well as what appear to be new sprites of Bidoof and the Land Forme Shaymin.
- This scan shows the new Battle Frontier located in the Fight Area of Battle Zone, a new Poffin-making feature (according to Serebii, anyway) having to do with Swalot, the new Global Trade Center, a Giratina figurine and some other locations we don't recognize (possibly part of the new Battle Frontier).
- Platinum will be released in Japan on September 13th.
- There is more Wi-Fi stuff, and Poffin-making can apparently be done over Wi-Fi (according to Serebii again).
- Giratina's Origin Forme does have the Levitate ability.
Yeah. Hopefully I'll update sooner next time.
05/23/08 Possible Alternate Form Shaymin
So this picture has been going around the Internet:
Interestingly enough, this is definitely a Sky form if it's real, despite the rumours mentioning an Ice-type form.
Let me say right away that this does not mean (if it is real) that those Serebiians were right and Regigigas has an Ice form. Regigigas was directly said to have a "Sky" form; Shaymin was only said to have "another form" which might be part-Ice. In fact I think it would make sense for all three of the movie's legendaries to have alternate forms with the Levitate ability, if we go into that. Either that or Regigigas has three alternate forms of Ice, Rock and Steel to represent the three lesser Regis.
It does look like Sugimori's art, but there are Pokémon fandom artists who have imitated it well before. I remain skeptical, but who knows?
EDIT: It's fake. The Sugimori-like artist is PurpleKecleon, who also designed the remarkably realistic-looking Dark/Psychic/Fighting starters that were floating around before the Japanese release of Diamond and Pearl.
Also, apparently the spelling "Forme", in reference to Deoxys and Giratina's multiple forms, has apparently been confirmed as non-Engrish. I'm still rather iffy on using it. It just looks wrong to me. :/
05/15/08 Platinum Announced
So, Pokémon Platinum has been officially announced at the official Japanese Pokémon site, which provides a full version of the Origin form Giratina's Sugimori art (I like it) as well as clearer versions of those two screenshots that were printed in CoroCoro. Nothing new, but this is nice for those interested in images.
*goes to cut that Giratina sprite out of the screenshot and save it*
EDIT: Okay, the screenshot wasn't as clear as I'd have liked, so... I randomly spent a couple of hours recreating it pixel by pixel using the D/P Giratina's palette. If you want a crystal-clear PNG to use in edits, you can use this one if you like:
Also, I don't know if you noticed on the screenshot, but you can see the tiny little shadow underneath the Giratina on the sprite. I find it kind of funny because it's a really tiny shadow and because Giratina is so big, it's actually a pixel above the bottom of Giratina's body.
05/13/08 Bigger Pokémon Platinum CoroCoro Scan
We now have a high-resolution scan of that CoroCoro page mentioned in the previous entry. It's too big for showing here, so just click that link. This is a considerably better-resolution scan than on Serebii, by the way; I got it from the Pocketmonsters.net Imageboard.
Okay, to exercise my limited Japanese skills: Near the top, in yellow and then white katakana, it says "Poketto monsutaa shiriizu". "Poketto monsutaa" is obviously Pocket Monsters, but I made a few attempts to make some sense of "shiriizu" (it is katakana, which most of the time means it is a transliteration of a foreign and usually English word) and couldn't figure anything out that made any sense EDIT: Crystylla pointed out that it's "Series", so it's presumably referring to a new installment to the Pokémon series. The Platinum logo still says Poketto Monsutaa Purachina or Pocket Monsters Platinum as I detailed in the pevious entry. I'm guessing the part after 2008 in the white box under the logo is an approximate release date, but I don't actually know what it says. The blue katakana above the Giratina's head says "Giratina" and the katakana in the silver box below it says "Origin Form". The yellow box beside that has some Origin form Giratina facts; the species says it's a "hankotsu Pokémon", but I'm afraid the trusty online Japanese dictionary I looked hankotsu up in returned no results. It's hardly the most interesting information there, anyway, but I can't help not assuming it's any different from the normal form. The type is Ghost/Dragon as with the normal form; the ability is "???", however, as opposed to the Levitate reported by the earlier rumours, which might mean they are wrong in more aspects than that. (Of course, I think it will be Levitate anyway; it's just not what CoroCoro says, so if that blog reported that as being said in CoroCoro, that's not true.) The height is 6.9 meters (22'7" for all you feet-using people) and the weight is 650.0 kilograms (1433.0 lb), both of which I think we knew already although I'm not sure.
The most interesting thing on this new scan is that the game screenshots are a lot clearer. Again, it is clear that the Giratina shadow on the first screenshot is the normal form because of the shape of the wings. Dialga and Palkia standing behind it and Cyrus in front of it are also clearer. However, there are some blotches of black, kind of like ink blots, instead of what I took to be cracks in the floor or broken pillars. Maybe Giratina is spreading shadow around the world somehow at this point in the storyline?
In the other screenshot, we finally see that supposed new battle interface properly: Giratina's status bar is dark-colored with a notably different HP bar. I'm toying with the idea that this will only be used when you battle Giratina, with each legendary Pokémon having its own color status bar, which would be pretty neat. Either that or we get that color for all the legendaries. It seems to look too dramatic, somehow, to be applied to all battles we get into. Maybe it's just me. Then there is also no ground under Giratina, which I originally thought was just because it's still on the "Wild GIRATINA appeared!" screen but in D/P would have had ground under it, which might mean that flying or levitating Pokémon will not have any ground under them in battle. We'll see.
We also see the Origin form sprite clearly (it's pretty neat) and that Giratina is level 47 when we battle it, showing for certain that we will be seeing Giratina, a National Pokédex Pokémon in Diamond and Pearl, in battle before beating the Elite Four. Presumably the Sinnoh Dex will either be shuffled around or we get the National Pokédex considerably sooner (possibly having it at the beginning of the game, which is what I'm hoping for). Finally, we get to see Lucas's new outfit in detail: he now wears a blue sweater and has a silver (or platinum) backpack. Personally, I think it looks pretty silly with the red beret, but eh.
Not much else on the scan. The most interesting thing, as I said, is the lack of indication that the Origin form Giratina's ability is Levitate, which casts some of the other rumours into doubt.
EDIT: I changed the banner (and then link colors) to reflect the current subject matter of the CoST better. Yay?