05/09/09 HeartGold and SoulSilver
...is what the aforementioned remakes have been confirmed to be called. PokéBeach has a translation of an article regarding it.
The names are rather cheesy, but personally, I like them better than the "DuskGold" and "DawnSilver" that people were insisting had been trademarked and so on a while ago. Not only do they appear like they would only make sense for the mascot Pokémon the other way around, but they also completely fail to have a relevance to the actual name. FireRed and LeafGreen aren't called that to represent something about the Pokémon in the game - the Pokémon on the covers happen to be a Fire and Grass type, but why would remakes add the "Fire" and "Leaf"? They were not thinking, "Hey, now that we're remaking the games, let's make the names allude more to the Pokémon on the box!" The remakes have no more to do with the Pokémon on the box than the originals did. It's to strengthen the name - instead of just being red, it's fire red, and instead of just being green, it's leaf green. The colors are reemphasized to bring them out more, make them seem fresher, renewed. That's what the remakes are doing to the originals: freshening and renewing the old, making it prettier and, well, more. It makes sense.
The names "Gold" and "Silver" are not emphasized or freshened by putting "Dusk" or "Dawn" on them. It's trying to squeeze relevance into it, relevance that is strikingly unfitting among the main series Pokémon games' universally abstract names that only portray a color and a vague connection with the cover Pokémon. What do Ho-oh and Lugia actually have to do with gold and silver, honestly? Nothing - they're not even remotely gold or silver in color. They're just nicely parallel names portraying colors that Ho-oh and Lugia can look pretty on.
HeartGold and SoulSilver emphasize the original names, if in a different way than FireRed and LeafGreen did. They bring to mind figures of speech: heart of gold, soul of silver. The prefixes as chosen for the sake of the original name, not the color of the Pokémon. They bring the original name out more while adding new connotations to it. I think they had the right idea, even if talking seriously about "Heart and Soul" feels odd now. It will stop feeling odd.
Now one's mind inevitably jumps to "What should the remakes be like?" Personally, I'm hoping for the following:
- Bring back Headbutting trees. The honey trees in D/P/Pt were annoying, what with the whole waiting six hours thing. Headbutting was straightforward. Also, I really liked how the Pokémon you Headbutted out of the trees could start the battle asleep. Bring that back as well.
- Make Kanto halfway decent if you're going to include it, for God's sake! I hated G/S/C's Kanto so much I refrained from going there unless I absolutely had to. There's plenty of room on the DS card; at least make a proper Viridian Forest. Preferably put more care into other places as well. FR/LG added new areas; how about HG/SS just including a proper Kanto?
- Speaking of which, I really want them to improve the Kanto portion of the plot. Or rather, add a Kanto portion of the plot; I don't remember there being much of one in the originals. How about having a branch of Team Rocket remain there after you've disbanded the Johto branch? Also, give the rival more of a role. Let us at least battle him at some point.
- Make the levels higher. This is kind of obvious, but the G/S/C Elite Four were the lowest-leveled by far. FR/LG lowered the levels of all the Elite Four Pokémon slightly for the first go, so it's not like they're adamant about preserving things like levels.
- I hope they include some Crystal features: the Odd Egg with a 50% chance of being shiny, Buena's Password, Goldenrod's Pokémon Center being a GTS (yes, it was essentially one in the Japanese Crystal), a Wi-Fi event giving you the GS Ball which gets you Celebi. No need to include Eusine or the Suicune plot, though.
- Make Johto more interesting as a region. It had a vague style to it originally, but of course, the Game Boy Color graphics didn't make it look stellar. I hope they reemphasize this in the remakes.
- I hope the character design remains more or less the same. G/S/C had my favorite player characters, and now they'll be able to make better-looking sprites of them.
- I'm personally hoping they bring back each version having its own set of sprites (it will be fun if they try to imitate the Gold/Silver poses), but I will understand them very well if they don't do it - they've got to include animations, after all, and that already requires making two poses for each Pokémon...
- ...although actually, part of me is kind of hoping that for this occasion they'll make Crystal-like animations. There are all sorts of things wrong with this idea that make it just about impossible - the sprites have more colors now which makes it that much more work, plus that there are more than twice as many sprites as in G/S/C, and it's not as if they'd be able to just make Crystal-like animations for the first 251 Pokémon, since then the other pokémon with their animations would look decidedly out of place - but hey.
- The PokéGear will presumably be moved to the bottom screen and basically work like the Pokétch. Not insensible - the PokéGear essentially is a watch, after all. I wish they'll have more radio stations with nice music, though. I'm also actually kind of hoping you'll be able to choose which apps to install on it (since presumably there will be D/P/Pt apps on it).
- Make Kanto properly! Yes, this warrants mentioning twice.
EDIT: Whoa. Apparently, we've got some screenshots now that the Pokémon Sunday show has aired. Your starter follows you around?! Elm's lab looks curiously unlablike; maybe they've changed it to being his home now or something.
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ShadowNc
Wow. You were right. On a lot of things. Wow.