Wrapping Up Nintendo #3: Holy Kanto Starters, Batman!

Oy vey. I get up early for a 20-minute presentation from Nintendo.  Nice going, you guys.

Anyways, let's get to all the nutty craziness wrought by the Pokemon Direct this morning.

First, Iwata-san was joined by two of his colleagues from The Pokemon Company and they talked about the history of the Pokemon franchise up until now.  That was a nice refresher course for me, and reminded me that I liked Ruby and Sapphire alot.

Then they talked connectivity and revealed something called Pokemon Bank, a brand new cloud-based Pokemon storage system that is FULLY COMPATIBLE with future titles (hmm... was that a subtle hint about Ruby and Sapphire remakes for 3DS?), but is going to cost an annual fee.  That's not too bad, I know a lot of Pokemon fans (myself included) would more than likely pay that annual fee to help Nintendo keep this up.

And then they talked about bringing Pokemon from Black, White, Black 2, and White 2 to the new one via a separate app, which is interesting to say the least.

And then they got into the game.  The initial starters for X & Y (Froakie, Fennekin, and Chespin) will be given to you by your friend, NOT the Pokemon Professor like in past games.  What the Pokemon Professor for the Kalos Region WILL give you starters-wise, however, are three starters that will sound familiar if you have played ANY previous Pokemon games: Charmander, Bulbasaur, or Squirtle.  Yes, the ORIGINAL Generation 1 starters will ALL be given to you in the game.  Even better?  Their final form (Charizard, Venusaur, and Blastoise) will ALL have Mega Evolutions. YEE HAA! That is going to make my choice of the Kanto starters almost too difficult.  Almost.

And then we got very little else in terms of details (as the presentation was a mere 20 minutes), except for new Pokemon X & Y 3DS XL units coming to North America and Europe... that won't be bundled with the games because they're coming out September 27th.  Say what?

Anyways that is the end of the wrapup, but before I go, I need to give you my thoughts on how this one was presented because they tried something a little bit different.  Unfortunately, I thought this one was terribly presented.  It really should have had subtitles on the video instead.  I didn't like the way this was presented at all and I would've rather had a Nintendo Direct with subtitles like the Animal Crossing Direct that Europe got but us Americans did not.  Nintendo, please try not to do this in the future.  It didn't play all that well with many of us English speakers.