You may have spoken the phrase “Go Pikachu!”, or any number of familiar pocket monsters that you all too excitedly shouted out while battle away in your favourite variation of the series. Now, it looks like you will have to wait until the very end of the game to return to the creatures you have held so close to your heart for so many years.
GameFreak’s Junichi Masuda recently mentioned on his blog that, only after completing the main story in Black & White would you be able to catch ’em all. The game was designed so only the monsters from this generation would appear until the games story was completed, as to give new and old gamers the same sense of discovery. This way when you are playing pokemon with your dad, as most grown men do, and discover a shapeless form with a derivative name, you can now feel excited like you did back in the Red and Blue days.
It is actually a very bold and smart idea, as it can get tiring seeing Pidgey for the hundredth time right at the start of every new release. My only fear is how all these new pokemon will feel and play, I will have to learn a whole new set of pokemons elements and weaknesses.
The Japanese will get to exeprience this first hand come September 18, unless they take advantage of the demo tour that will be going on this month. We can look forward to this fresh, new experience come sometime in the spring of next year.