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As you may know, I’m sort of into Pokemon. And by that I mean the mean the main games, not the spin-offs or the TV shows or the films. That’s all silly nonsense padding out the year long gaps between the main titles.

Recently game were flogging off the last of their Pokemon DSi’ stock. Had to jump on this! My DS Lite is dying (launch system. It has served me well) and I wanted to run through both Black and Soul Silver.

There’s something about them. It’s the charm, the music, the slow pace, the multiplayer.

Also it looks killer.

Sob story -

When I was 12 there was this big game launched called Pokemon. A buddy and I got the bus into town. I had £30 in my pocket and wanted to buy Pokemon Red. Back then the only game shops were Electronic Boutique and Argos, and both were sold out.

A few years ago I went insane and bought Pokemon Yellow from GAME. It’s great but… it’s not Red.

I want Red.

I’m willing to trade a copy or 2 of Really Big Sky for Pokemon Red. UK. Has to be in working order, derp.

Let’s make it happen!

(Blue would be slightly acceptable)

I was a bit bored over the summer so I started a little research project on something that has annoyed and wondered me for years;

Pokemon battle times.

Each game has totally different battle speeds so I decided I’d sit down and time them all. Then I went a bit further…

(all images in this post can be enlarged, so there)

The GBA games are super mega fast and the DS versions got faster down the line. Transition time is the amount of time it takes before the menu can be controlled or any action can be taken. The attack time is the gap between the move being selected and then performed (usually when the text fades away, can’t really remember now).

(Ignore the Battle Times text, it appears I forgot to rename that chart). This one measured the “boot” time (skipping the intro). The blue bar represents the time taken to get to the menu. The purple bar represents the gap between selecting your save file and the game starting.

Ruby is shaping up to be a very fast game.

This is where the research petered out…

I thought I’d throw in a load of other stuff to measure and broadened the selection of games. But I gave up and my laptops HDD was getting full with all the video recordings (that’s how it was measured. Quite precise, yo). Yellow was the fastest from all the tests I did. I don’t have Red or Blue. I blacked out some results that I couldn’t test for because I wasn’t far enough into those games to get a measurement.

NERD.

So I’m really into Pokemon. Like a lot. Next to GTA, Team Fortress 2, Left4Dead it’s amongst my favourite game(s). Like the sweaty but sexy nerd I am I’ve done a little digging into the released screenshots;

First off the battle screenshot!

Zorua! Notice the outline has parts missing. This is common when resizing sprites, if a picture is shrunk then you can expect pixel loss. It’s probably happening all over that image but it’s most noticeable on the outline. In the whole screenshot it’s clearly Zoroark attacking. In Pokemon games the enemy usually doesn’t move during an attack, there are exceptions.

What does this tell us? They might have made the battle system more reactive, or that they’ve added a zoom/panning (think Golden Sun).

What backs this up is the “spot” the Pokemon stand on has edges. Does this mean it’s now a flat polygon?

Onto Zoroark!

The most noticeable feature here is the whole sprite is now in view. This seems to be at a cost though – the back sprite has a base zoom of 2.

There are isolated differences as some pixels aren’t doubled. So again – Zoroark’s sprite is showing signs of a real-time zoom, though this time it could be put down to the standard way in which Pokemon moves are animated (with zoom, rotation, colour overlay).

My apologies for the poor cut outs. If Zoroark is halved in size then the height differences of both Pokemon are quite similar.

There seems to be a problem with shadows too in that the they don’t match up to Zoroark, unless its standing on one leg. This is probably just an oversight with how they render the shadow, which looks to be a semi-transparent sprite with a black overlay.

The horizon is also curved.

Given how much they’ve emphasised the 3D engine in other screenshots it might be safe to assume a Golden Sun style battle system will be in the Gen 5 games. Either way the battle graphics look a lot more dynamic than the slideshow that has been in every Pokemon game so far.

*Just remembered the move likely being used there is Dark Pulse which only shakes the Pokemon, so there’s no other reason for Zorua to be resized other than for a new camera technique.

I’ve invented a device that’s technically part iPod, part Nike+, part Pokewalker.