Author: Vinnie Bartilucci

Review: “Pokémon X & Y” bring new dimension to franchise

With nine sets of core games, six generations of characters, and eighteen years of history, one would think that Pokemon might be approaching the end of the tall grass.  But with Pokemon X & Y selling over four million copies worldwide on its premiere weekend, the series show no weakness at all.  The new game, the first to run exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS (and the new low-budget option for new gamers, the 2DS) adds a lot of new characters, new battle formats and a beautiful 3-D design to make it easily the most beautiful game in the series, as well as the busiest.

The basic gameplay remains unchanged – select one of three Pokemon to start your journey around the world, this time the lovely Kalos Region, a land based on the architecture and design of France. Use that Pokemon to catch other wild Pokemon, raise and train them to more powerful levels, allowing you to catch even more powerful creatures, lather, rinse, repeat.  But as with each game, there’s a whole new set of interesting critters to catch and collect, and almost unlimited strategy potential as you choose the most powerful moves for your characters, as well as choosing the most versatile fighting types to meet the challenge of both wild monsters, but other trainers, both in the game and in the real world.  The game is fully rendered in 3-D, taking advantage of the power of the 3Ds to deliver a new view of the characters, no longer the sinple top-down look of past games.  Battles feature sweeping camera angles as the characters battle, much in the style of the Pokemon Coliseum games for the various console systems.  There’s endless little details in the animation – your character drops to one knee when chatting to children, you see them actually pick up found items, and errant breezes make the trees sway and the grass rustle.  For the first time, the circle pad lest you move in diagonals, not the simple four directions of the games with only a D-pad.  Indeed, it’s so easy to move around, it takes some getting used to – you need to take an extra moment to make sure you’re actually lined up with items and characters you want to interact with.

Over and above the basic battle of the game, X & Y give you new ways to train and interact with your Pokemon.  Minigames allow you increase your friendship with your little friends and raise their battle stats.  Pokemon-Amie is a feature to the Nintendogs games, where you can pet your Pokemon, feed him treats and more, via the 3Ds touchpad.  The system’s camera is used for basic facial recognition, allowing you to play “monkey-see monkey-do” with them.  Super Training is a series of minigames designed to increase their battle stats like strength and speed.

About the only hardware feature of the 3DS that isn’t used to its fullest potential is Street and Spot Pass.  The game will receive messages of game updates and promotions from Nintendo in the game via Spotpass through an in-game device called the Holo-Caster, but interaction with other players only happens while the game is in play.  The Player Search Service allows you to interact with friends that you’ve met using friend codes, and if you connect to the Internet, any random players from around the world that are playing at the a moment.  Trading is much faster now, and more flexible.  An upcoming app release, Pokemon Bank, will allow you to store up to 3,000 characters on the Cloud, for a small monthly fee.

Each new Pokemon adventure brings new players and cartoon viewers to the series, and for long time players like me (seriously – the only thing I’ve done uninterrupted in my life that play Pokemon is be married), sparks the excitement of the series anew.  X and Y are easily the best new addition to the franchise in years, and if you were looking for an excuse to pick up or upgrade to a 3DS, you’ve got your reason.

Marvelman / Miracleman Scheduled; Hell Freezes Over?

  • News
  • October 14, 2013

After their first announcement at San Diego four years ago that they had obtained the rights, Marvel Comics announced last weekend at New York Comic Con that reprints of the original Alan Moore / Neil Gaiman Miracleman series would begin in January 2014.  Gaiman will then continue the story with issue 25, which he said was completed, but never released, back when Eclipse was publishing the series.

Joe Quesada made the announcement at his “Cup O’ Joe” panel at the convention, to an appropriately appreciative audience. Marvel will be reprinting the entire series, starting with its first issue as seen in the UK magazine Warrior, reprinted in Eclipse’s Miracleman #1.  The early issues were written by Alan Moore, but his name is not being used in any publicity for the series.

Originally named Marvelman, the character became “Miracleman” in America after Marvel Comics contacted its US publisher, Eclipse, and asked it be changed to avoid confusion in the marketplace.  Marvel, who has been referring to the character as “Marvelman” since their first announcement of the acquisition, has decided to reprint the series under the US title of Miracleman after all.  Tom Brevoort explains, “Gaiman and Buckingham worked on Miracleman, and that’s the name under which the series is best known in the States. So Miracleman it is.”

The series will be re-lettered and re-colored, but there no editing or alteration of the art is planned.  Some of the violence was quite intense in the original series, and issue nine featured very graphic depictions of childbirth, so the plan not to censor the art is good news indeed.

Marvelman was created by Mick Anglo when the British comics publisher who was reprinting the popular Fawcett Captain Marvel needed material when the various Captain Marvel titles ended, pursuant to a DC lawsuit.  Marvelman bore more than a slight thematic resemblance to Captain Marvel – young boys given a word of power to change into a powerful hero – a deliberate choice by the publisher.

Marvelman

Marvelman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the early eighties, Alan Moore wrote new adventures for the hero, the first of his “Everything you know is wrong” style of completely revamping a heroes origin while still paying respect and adherence to the stories that were told.  He would do this again with great success on Swamp Thing when he came to the US to work for DC.

The issue of ownership of the character has been a rats’ nest of red tape, even during the original run in Warrior.  To attempt to summarize the tale would not come close to getting across the complexity – The management suggests you seek out the exhaustive work of Irish comics journalist Pádraig Ó Méalóid, whose exhaustive history of the boondoggle puts all obsessive comics writers to shame.

Specific details of the schedule and format of the Miracleman reprints will arrive shortly with the January solicits.  If the book is published monthly, with the same page count of the Eclipse issues, it would Neil’s new material would not be seen for two years.  But considering the nigh-legendary status of the run, new readers will finally have a chance to read this seminal series, both in the careers of the creators involved and the exciting storytelling style.

Two Doctor Who Episodes Found, Released Today!

  • News
  • October 11, 2013

patrick_troughtonThe BBC has confirmed the recovery of nine episodes of th Patricke Troughton era Doctor Who, a complete set of The Enemy of the World, and all but part three of  The Web of Fear.  Both adventures are available now from iTunes, with DVD releases to follow. Part three of Web of Fear, still missing, is included with a restored audio track and a series of telesnaps.  It’s unknown if it may at some time receive the animated treatment that many past adventures have gotten.

The rumors circulating around fandom since the early summer have ended up being truer than many assumed, but not as true as most hoped.  The episodes, hailing from Nigeria (not Ethiopia, as the rumor claimed) and ended up falling far short of the outlandish tales of a hundred or more episodes.

While it was standard practice to record the broadcasts onto 16mm film, those films (And those of many shows, both British and American) were lost as stations wiped tapes and destroyed films as a cost cutting measure. In the early days of television, most assumed there’d be no desire to re-watch television programs, also resulting in the lack of residual agreements for so many stars of early American TV.

The episodes were sold to foreign markets after their initial broadcast, and many times the episodes were passed on through several countries as they continued to be sold.  The tapes/films usually came with an order to return or destroy the masters upon broadcast.  It’s only through that ordered being ignored that allows these episodes to be found today.

It can only be hoped that more episodes may be found in TV station vaults, but as time passes, the possibilities dwindle.  Unless more episodes were found here and are secretly awaiting restoration, this may be the last big score we’ll see in quite a while.

Until the discovery of time travel of course, which will likely first be used to recover our recent history than ancient history.  Yeah, it’s be nice to record the Sermon on the Mount, but I for one would rather get all those Ernie Kovacs Shows back.

BBC News confirms “A Number” of Doctor Who missing episodes found

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  • October 8, 2013

Those who were waiting for the BBC itself to weigh in with a statement can stop waiting. BBC News announced on their website today that “a number” of lost Doctor Who episodes have been found, and returned.

As discussed in our story from earlier in the week, the titular “number”, reaching as high as 106 in rumors  that have circulated for most of the summer, may be “two”.  The Radio Times reported two found adventures over the weekend, quietly following a more bombastic and hand-wavey piece by the tabloid The Mirror that went with the more sensationalist 106 figure.

The rumors (repeated almost verbatim in the Mirror piece) claim the questionably-sized cache was found in a TV station vault in Ethiopia.  The BBC piece (which can be assumed the least apocryphal, or at least, the least wildly inaccurate, ) avoids any specifics of source, other than that some episodes have been recovered.  This lack of detail may indicate that even they are just reporting the existence of a rumor.  Some writers have reminded the populace that even BBC News gets it wrong about events in their own organization.

A press conference, originally announced for Tuesday, was postponed to later in the week.  No specific details of the conference have been shared, but the BBC article suggests that news about how these episodes will be made available for viewing will be included.  This parallels the Radio Times’ report that the episodes will be available via iTunes.

So, very slow progress, but considering that more than a couple experts had once posited that all the episodes that would ever be found have been, ANY progress is monumental.  And as Steven Moffat has discussed himself in a recent interview, the media knows that reporting anything about Doctor Who will bring eyes to their pages, traditional or electronic.

Watch this proverbial space for more news, likely occurring over New York Comic Con, where the staff of ComicMix (including yr. obt. svt.) will attempt to separate the news from the rumor, and likely then going ahead and reporting both.

At this point, we must assume that there is nothing that can be assumed, and as sage advice, I shall draw your attention this dialogue from the classic of political satire, Yes, Minister:

Bernard Woolley: (I’ve heard) that there is £1 million worth of diamonds from South Africa in a Downing Street safe, but of course it’s only a rumour.
James Hacker: Is that true?
Woolley: Oh, yes.
Hacker: So, there ARE all those diamonds in Downing Street!
Woolley: Are there?
Hacker: You just said there were.
Woolley: No, I didn’t.
Hacker: Yes, you did! You said you’d heard this rumour, I said is it true, you said yes!
Woolley: I said yes, it was true that it was a rumour.
Hacker: You said you heard it was true!
Woolley: No, I said it was true that I heard it!

“Doctor Who” lost episodes to be announced on Tuesday (we think)

  • News
  • October 6, 2013
The Web of Fear

The Web of Fear (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A rumor claiming a cache of as many as 106 episodes of Doctor Who being found has been declared at least one percent true. The Radio Times is reporting that missing episodes from the Patrick Troughton era have not only been found, but will be available for sale on iTunes as early as this Wednesday.

The BBC have announced a press conference on Tuesday, presumably to share specifics.  Insiders are suggesting the missing episodes include Enemy of the World  and The Web of Fear.  Enemy of the World features a lookalike for The Doctor attempting to (dare I say it) rule the world in the mid twenty-first century.  The Web of Fear is the second appearance of The Great Intelligence, just seen in the latest series of the show, and features the returning Abominable Snowmen androids, and first appearance of Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, here a Colonel, but eventually promoted to Brigadier General, will go on to lead UNIT in the Pertwee years, and on through the run up to actor Nicholas Courtney‘s passing.

This is a minor confirmation of a rumor that has run roughshod over Doctor Who fandom for most of the Summer.  The story, broken first by the folks at Bleeding Cool, involves as many as 106 episodes of the series being discovered in an Ethiopan TV stations vaults.  This trove allegedly contained episodes from both the Hartnell and Troughton years, including completely lost stories, and missing episodes from partially complete adventures.  Taken with grains of salt by most, the story gained suggestions of corroboration as times passed; members of the restoration team came out staunchly against the rumor, and then tactfully amended their positions.  The BBC went with the very popular “Cannot confirm or deny”, which, thanks to a world where shows like The Thick of It and House of Cards are often mistaken for documentaries, was taken as a tacit “yes” by many optimists.

The story got a new life when UK tabloid (and all that that implies) The Mirror posted a story “confirming” the find this weekend.  The story was light on facts, and appeared mostly to parrot points made in the original Bleeding Cool article from the early summer, leading most Who-fen to wave it off.  But the Radio Times announcement, combined with the press conference, has caused a resurgence in the hope that the rumor may have far more than its current one to two percent veracity ratio.

Considering the long time frame between the alleged discovery and now, one could envision a scenario where episodes have been getting a top-secret restoration treatment to tie into next month’s anniversary.  But with the DVD release of the final hartnell adventure The Tenth Planet having been hastily rescheduled for October 14th in the UK, many are wondering if the currently announced contents of the disc may change radically at that press conferences.  At least one report of the massive lost episodes haul claims it includes a complete copy of Tenth Planet. The final episode, featuring the first regeneration of The Doctor, is one of the most desired missing episodes.  The only existing footage of the regeneration is a brief clip from an episode of children’s show Blue Peter.

The original number may not be true, but the recovery of ANY episodes of the series is newsworthy, and the management entreats hopeful Whovians to bear that in mind when definitive details are released this Tuesday.

But so help me, if they’ve recovered The Web Planet, I may break my fingers pulling my wallet from my pocket.

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REVIEW – Scribblenauts Unmasked – a DC Comics Adventure

REVIEW – Scribblenauts Unmasked – a DC Comics Adventure

After months of anticipation the latest Scribblenauts adventure is out, taking the popular series in a new direction, namely into the DC Universe. Series hero Maxwell and his twin sister Lily have a debate over who’s the better hero, batman or Superman, and decide the best way to find out is to go there and find out.  So with the help of Maxwell’s magic notepad that can create anything he writes in it, and Lily’s magic globe that can transport them anywhere they like, they head for Gotham City, where things…so not go smoothly.

To answer the most important question first, the library of DC Characters the game can create is outrageously exhaustive. No Watchmen and no Milestone characters, but The Legion and the Substitute Legion, the Doom Patrol, the Challengers of the Unknown, the All-Star Squadron, and damn near member of the Justice League you can think of is in there – and yes, that means Ted Kord – all three Blue Beetles, in fact.  It’s not perfectly complete: Eyeful Ethel, a failed Legion of Super Heroes candidate didn’t make the cut. And while Ralph Dibny, The Elongated Man, is in there, his wife didn’t make the cut. Which is odd because Jean Loring, in Eclipso form, did. While I found a few characters who weren’t in there, I was far more impressed with the ones who were.

The Big Bad in the game is Maxwell’s long-time enemy, Doppleganger, an evil version of Maxwell who sides with the DC Villains. In a happy change from past adventures, Maxwell’s sister Lily plays an active, albeit support role, providing Maxwell with news and assistance from the Batcave.

While the game is adorable to see, the characters chosen are not all cutesy-tootsie.  One of your first missions in Gotham is to transport serial killer Mr. Zsasz to a prison helicopter. Oh, the fun as I had to explain to The Kid who he was and how he came to be…

The mechanics of the game are largely the same as usual for the series – presented with a number of puzzles to solve, you must surmount obstacles by creating items with your magic notepad.  So, if standing before a cliff to have to scale, you could write “ladder” and a ladder would appear. Similarly, you could write “Grappling Hook,” “Jet pack” (at which point it would ask if you wanted Adam Strange‘s jetpack, Space Ranger’s, or a choice of several others), all of which would get you up the cliff equally successfully.  Special bonus missions with special limitations offer extra bonuses.  More than anything else, the game rewards creativity, both in the point values, and the sheer joy of success when you need to call for a doctor, and Dr. Mid-Nite appears.

In this game, a lot of the challenges are more combat based. Random villains will be causing mischief, and you are required to either arm yourself, or crate a hero to combat the spandex-clad menaces. The game has hundred of mini-missions to beat, and the missions change every time you enter a new location.

And WHAT locations – Starting in Gotham City, you slowly earn the chance to travel to Metropolis, Central city, Atlantis, and even Oa.  More and more characters and props become available as you pregress, allowing you to wear gear and costumes of dozens of heroes.

The story is the same in both the Wii U and 3DS versions of the game, with small gameplay differences on each platform. The Wii U version allows other players to interact with the game by using a Wii Remote while the main player uses the Gamepad. The 3Ds version uses streetpass, allowing players to unlock special uniforms and gear by exchanging data with other players automatically, just while walking around.

An already fun game series will get an introduction to a whole new audience who will not be disappointed with the story, or the selection of characters. Easy to pick up, and just as easy to stop and save when the real world beckons.Well worth your time.

 

REVIEW: Doctor Who – The Complete Seventh Series

who-seven-150x184-4924796There were certainly enough twists and turns in the latest series of Doctor Who to warrant a re-viewing, and not that The Complete Seventh Series is out on DVD and Blu-Ray, you’ve got your chance. The Fall of the Ponds, The Impossible Girl, and one hell of a cliffhanger, all packed up in one nice little package.

The box features all 13 episodes of the series, including all the prequels, as well as the five-part mini-series “Pond Life”  There’s also three new mini-sodes featuring The Doctor working on his chore to delete himself from the databanks of the world, he and River Song in one of their various unseen adventures, and Clara having a heart-to-heart with the TARDIS.

After a change in heart, it also features both Christmas episodes, Jenna Coleman‘s first (official) episode The Snowmen as well as the previous year’s The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe. Commentaries are only included for selected episodes, and while the beloved Doctor Who Confidential is no longer a thing, they’ve added in the brief making of features they posted on the BBC Website. They’ve pulled the cast interview’s from BBC America‘s The Nerdist as well. Longer making of features cover Karen and Arthur’s last day on set, a more in-depth piece on The Gunslinger, and Creating Clara.

A series of specials round out the set, including The Science of Doctor Who as seen on BBC America, as well specials on The Companions, Doctor Who at Comic-Con and more on The Doctor’s adventures in America, both on screen and behind it.

Another winner of a set, equal in quality to the sets for the previous series. This’ll easily keep you busy till the anniversary special come November 23rd.

And in case you don’t already have the past sets, they’ve updated the complete box set to include the seventh series, and included the Sonic Screwdriver universal remote control of which you may have heard.  So, good opportunity to buy the love of your favorite Whovian for the rest of their regenerations life.

 

Eclipso – A Dark and Shadowy History

  • News
  • September 19, 2013

Eclipso_OriginDan Didio has written the latest iteration of the character for Villains Month, part of the new Forever Evil crossover event.  It ties up a plot arc that’s been weaving through the New 52 books since their inception – the villain’s black diamond has appeared in the short-lived Team 7 title, as well as Catwoman Demon Knights and even Sword and Sorcery. So clearly his return is intended to be a big one.

But this isn’t the first time DC has tried to make Eclipso into a top-echelon threat. Not by a long length.

People go on about how many times Aquaman has been revamped, but I gotta tell you, I think Eclipso has him beat.  Originally a sort of Jekyll-Hyde pastiche, he was released from within scientist Bruce Gordon whenever he was caught in the shadow of an eclipse.  Fortunately, eclipses are rather rare, so the character almost never appeared…oh, wait…ah, I’m being told that he could also appear under the shadow of an artificial eclipse, like a tea tray being used to block the light of a sunlamp.  Well, that certainly changes things.

He had a run in House of Secrets that got reprinted quite a bit in the wonderful years of the 100-page Super-Spectaculars, where people my age got most of their knowledge of the golden age and early silver age of comics.  He re-appeared on occasion when they needed a relatively generic and replaceable villain – he showed up in the Metal Men book as a Big bad, for pete’s sake.

It was with Eclipso: The Darkness Within that they first tried to make him into a major player.  Eclipso was now a major force of evil, hidden on the dark side where he secretly tried to control and destroy the shards of a massive black diamond, the Heart of Darkness.  But a visit by Lar Gand (Not the Legion’s  Mon-El, but the post-crisis version…look, just read my history of the character if you feel the need to catch up) gave Eclipso the idea to use the diamonds to possess the heroes of Earth, just as he’d used the first/original shard to possess Gordon.

The series did well and spawned a Eclipso title, one of the few times a villain carried a book.  Bruce Gordon was now being played as the Van Helsing to Eclipso’s Dracula, the Nayland Smith to Fu Manchu.  The book didn’t last all that long, and Eclipso sank back into the mid-card.

ComicMixer John Ostrander got ahold of him during his exemplary run on The Spectre, and the history changed again.  Not merely a demon of evil, Eclipso was in fact God’s first tool of Wrath, before The Spectre.  Eclipso, it’s explained, cause the biblical Flood at God’s behest.

This version of Eclipso returned a number of times, possessing Superman, taking Alex Montez as a host in a great arc in JSA, and most controversially, taking over Jean Loring, who was in quite a state after the events of Identity Crisis.

But in there, we got another version of his origin.  Now it’s explained that the black diamonds came from Apokalips, and Eclipso was created by Darkseid.  That was one of those changes that turned vast gouts of the past of the character into the rubbish heap, and it was not taken well by fans.

The New 52 has seen fit to bring the character back to his “god of vengeance” position, though his connection to God has not been re-confirmed.  With a number of appearances in several books, it’s a thread that has been in place for about all of the New 52.   Dan Didio, who did a very good job with the first few issues of Phantom Stranger, does a good job here summing up the latest new history of the character, and making clear how big a threat he can be.  Another small change – Bruce Gordon has now become “Gordon Jacobs,” likely to make the name more different from its original in-joke sources, Bruce Wayne and Commissioner James Gordon. He’s now being portrayed as a disgraced scientist, after an experiment with a solar-powered city goes terribly wrong.  This sets Gordon up to be tempted by Eclipso, as opposed to merely possesed against his will.  Like the spin made the the Phantom Stranger, it allows the character to be a bit more complex.

They’ve used Phantom Stranger to set up a couple other powerful Mystic characters – the first appearance of Raven was made there, though not mentioned by name, and that of her demonic father, classic Teen Titans foe Trigon, who also received a Villains Month issue.

Whether Eclipso will be a major player in Forever Evil, or if he’s being set up for an even later use is unsure.  But with the amount of time they’ve spent into setting him up, there are clearly big plans for the character.

REVIEW: The Wonderful 101 – One-credible

The Wonderful 101 has been a year coming – it’s been part of Nintendo’s many show reels for the Wii U system since its release, and it was one of the most popular demos at last year’s New York Comic Con.  And it has been worth every minute.

Conquering alien horde Geathjerk has set its sights on Earth, and the secret army of the Centinels, code named “The Wonderful 100” is out last hope against with you leading them, the “101st”.  The team saves citizens, and then quickly deputizes them into duty, using them like building blocks to form weapons and tools to fight the rampaging monsters.

Another work from  Hideki Kamiya, produced by Atsushi Inaba, it’s got a lot in common with their Viewtiful Joe series for the Game Cube.  If Viewtiful Joe was a love letter to the Kamen Rider series, Wonderful 101 is a love letter to the Super Sentai series, the shows they use to bring us Power Rangers.  Like Joe before it, the game is rife with fourth-wall breaking comedy, over the top action and magnificent character design.

Also like its predecessor, the game is VERY complex.  With dozens, potentially hundreds of heroes and villains on screen at once, things can get very small very quickly, combine that with a control system that at various times uses all the buttons of the Wii U Game Pad, including drawing on the screen, the playing is required to do quite a lot, quite often.  Reasonable progress can be made with button mashing (and a very welcome “very easy” mode) but there’s enough opportunity for impressive combos and innovative gameplay to keep a dedicated gamer engrossed.  With a hundred hidden characters to find and many times that in hidden items, the replay value of the game is vast.  It takes advantage of the Wii U Game Pad to deliver a new playing mechanic.

The work pays off, as the story is filled with many twists and turns, skewering the tropes of tokusatsu while it tributes them.  The character design alone will keep you laughing for days. (Wonder Beer? Wonder Toilet?).  The theme song, “Heroes’ March” that plays under the action, is a wacky ditty that sounds like what would happen of John Philip Sousa did the theme for a Power Rangers show, orchestrated by Jim Steinman.

The complexity may make it the kind of game that might turn a casual player off, but for the hardcore gamer (not to mention fans of Japanese science-fiction) it’s a treat.

Features, Evolutions and Cool Stuff Coming for “Pokémon X and Y”

  • News
  • September 5, 2013

The newest entries in the popular Nintendo franchise aren’t due out until October 12th, but Pokémon X and Y have kept both in the news and the gamers’ zone of attention by a steady series of announcements about new features, and now new apps designed to work with the new releases.

Pokémon X and Y are the first games designed specifically for the Nintendo 3DS (as well as the newly announced 2DS, designed without the 3-D functionality for younger players), and will feature not only scores of new collectible creatures, but new forms of classic beasts.  New in this game is the Mega-Evolution, a new super-powered state of a Pokémon’s mature form.  Several classic Pokémon have been announced to be returning with Mega-forms including Mewtwo, Kangashkan, and just announced on the 4th, the original starters Blastoise, Venusaur and Charizard.  With the help of a new stone and a device called the Mega Ring, Pokémon who have formed a special bond with their trainers will gain access to this new form through events in the game.

Following up on the downloadable apps released with the last games, Pokémon Black and White, X and Y users will be able to download Pokemon Bank, an app that will allow users to upload their captured Pokemon to the cloud, with room for over 3,000 little monsters.  This will allow trainers to save captures not only from X and Y, but from both Black and White games as well, a process that could be quite time-consuming in past games.

The app and service is similar to Pokemon Box, a game and memory card released for the Game Cube for use with the Game Boy Advance releases, Ruby and Sapphire. Wii users could also upload their Pokemon captured in Diamond and Pearl to My Pokemon Ranch, a game that allowed you to raise and play with your monsters in a new way on a farm environment.  Unlike those games, since this app includes cloud storage of your data, the service will have an annual fee.  Details of pricing has not been released, tho the app will feature a trial period before payment will be required.

For those who haven’t picked up a 3DS yet (and let’s face it, even for those who have), Nintendo will add to its series of custom model systems with both a red and blue system with custom Pokemon graphics featuring the games’ legendary Pokémon, Xerneas and Yveltal.  The custom systems will be released on September 27th for $199.99, the system’s standard list price.  The price and the early date suggest the systems will not come with the new Pokémon games included.

[[[Pokémon X and Y]]] will be released on October 12th.  As that’s the same weekend as New York Comic Con, there’s some speculation that Nintendo will hold an event in New York to tie into the release.

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