What we want from Pokémon Black and White

A lot of us are gripped with a bit of Pokémon fever with the release of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, and Nintendo has just accelerated things with the announcement of Pokémon Black and White for the Nintendo DS…

Initial reactions to this news don’t seem to be as positive as you’d think. Sure, it’s great to have a new generation of Pokémon games, however from seeing comments from around the net, it’s clear that a lot of people would prefer to have the series debut on the Nintendo 3DS so it can take advantage of whatever new features the new system will provide.

So what do people want from the 5th generation?

3DS: The majority of people feel that Black and White should be for Nintendo’s next handheld system. At this point in time the information we have says that the new games will definitely be for the Nintendo DS, however I feel that there is still a strong possibility that these titles will take advantage of all of the 3DS features. Hopefully, if my theory pans out, Pokémon Black and White will be a cross generational game that will probably be released at the same time or after the release of the 3DS but will work with both system and still make use of all of the 3DS features… it makes sense… and it doesn’t make sense to do that though. Firstly, it makes sense because it allows Nintendo to sell the games knowing that they have such a huge user base… On the other hand, it doesn’t make sense to do that because Pokémon sells systems and I would think they’d want to herd people into buying the 3DS just for Pokémon at the very least.

Dynamic environments and battles: The current Pokémon DS games have introduced 3D models into the Pokémon universe, mostly in the form of buildings, trees and other objects that weren’t human or Pokémon. From the recent screenshots that have been released, it seems that the entire environment is polygon based… and I believe even the characters themselves may be so… though we’ll have to see video footage of the game to truly confirm that. The single shot of the battle scene also suggests to me that the camera will move around and that the Pokémon are rendered in 3D, though, like the previous DS games, made to look like 2D sprites. To add to that, if I’m correct about 3DS features being implemented, then the whole transformation into 3D polygon environments and battle scenes will be even more interesting.

So I’ve posted up a couple of things I would like to see from the new games, I’d like to hear what the rest of you would think would be good to see happen with Pokémon.

Note: If you’re wondering where that headline image came from, it’s actually one of my vector art works…