Pokemon Black & White topple Xfer Fears

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Black & White feature unique Legendary Pokemon which are sure to make gamers want to own both games -- pictured here is Legendary Pokemon Zekrom, found in Pokemon Black!

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Despite the fact that it is currently on its 5th Generation, whenever a new generation of games is announced and released, fans worry that they will not be able to take the Pokemon from their current game world and move with them into the new world created by developer Game Freak.

The source of this concern can be traced back to the first two generation of games, Pokemon Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow from Generation 1, and Gold, Silver, and Crystal in Generation 2. The popularity of these games cannot be emphasized strong enough to communicate how strong the bond was for most players, who developed a strategy that has become a tradition among trainers: play your game and, when the next game is released, transfer your Pokemon forward into it and continue your path to Pokemon Master status!

When a new generation of game is released it always includes a new set of Pokemon that expands the National Pokedex, but the familiarity and -- dare I say it? The love -- that players have for the previous generation of Pokemon is such that the desire to bring them along makes total sense. After the challenges and triumphs of three full games that a player has shared with their Pokemon, the bond that they form with them makes bringing them along to a new region and generation of games a natural desire.

When the third generation of the game was released it landed in gamer hands in a vastly different package, its cartridge being sleeker, smaller, and packing infinitely more power and capabilities, largely due to the fact that the cartridge was made for the next generation of Nintendo Hand-Held Consoles, the Game Boy Advanced.

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Having recently received its official March 6, 2011 release date, Pokemon Black and Pokemon White are already available for pre-order on Amazon.com worldwide!

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A Round Peg in a Square Hole Dilemma

When Nintendo ramped up to release the newest generation of its Game Boy console, the Game Boy Advanced (or GBA) the announcement was greeted with incredible excitement and anticipation by fans, largely due to the huge leap forward in tech that the device represented. Reviewers spoke of it in terms of a traditional gaming console that you could put in your pocket, a notion that resonated with fans, who liked the idea of playing more complex and expanded games.

At Game Freak the new hardware was greeted with equal enthusiasm, because it allowed the team working on the famous game series to do things in the game that they always wanted to do, but could not because of the limitations in the Game Boy hardware. Jumping in with both feet and a lot of team-based enthusiasm, the developers began to craft a new world in a region called Hoenn, for the first pair of games in the next gen, Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire.

Throughout the development phase coders at the company considered the idea that there should be a mechanism to allow players to bring their previous Pokemon forward with them -- but the new platform was very different from the previous one, and creating that sort of connectivity would have been difficult. In the end they chose not to support communication with the previous games, believing that the issue was not an important one.

When the games were released on the GBA platform, among the first questions that were asked by players was: how do I move my teams from the previous games to the new ones? When they learned that they could not do that, fan reaction was instant and clear -- they were very unhappy.

A New Generation, with New Pokemon

While Ruby and Sapphire presented a whole new set of Pokemon, and there would be availability for some of the

Pokemon from the previous generations through titles for the Gamecube, the lack of full availability was a rally point for fans, who were only mollified when it was announced that Game Freak would be releasing complete re-makes of the original games in the form of Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen.

Now the fans would have the chance to obtain their best loved and favorite Pokemon from Kanto and Johto, and bring them to the world of Hoenn!

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The issue of connectivity and the ability to transfer Pokemon from one generation to the next was clearly a subject that the developer should have taken much more seriously, that was a lesson well learned. When the 4th Generation of games was released considerable care was taken to communicate that, despite the fact that the games would be released on a new platform once again, a mechanism to permit migrating your Pokemon into the new games would be present.

When Pokemon Diamond and Pearl were released, fans were given the Poke Park, providing a means to transfer their Pokemon to the new world in an entertaining way. That transfer would be one-way, however, and once the Pokemon were brought over to the new world, they could never return to the old, but even with that limitation the fact that Game Freak was fulfilling its promise to always have connectivity was a celebrated thing.

Black & White Hype

When the new games for the 5th Generation were viewed on the horizon there was already a solid promotional plan in place at Nintendo and Game Freak which centered around the unique Legendary Pokemon that would be part of the games, and this was the primary focus for the early PR work. Fans ate it up!

When the next phase of PR was deployed one of the releases touted that you would only have access to the new Pokemon while playing the game -- and quickly moved on to presenting the WiFi connectivity features that would be part of the game, without providing more information on connectivity. The reaction from the fan community was predictable.

Above is Legendary Pokemon Reshiram, found in Pokemon White

Rumors of a repeat of the Generation 3 debacle immediately began to make the rounds of fan sites online, but this time the folks at Game Freak were on top of the matter, and quickly issued releases detailing the new connectivity system -- called PokeShifter -- that would provide full exchange connection for Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, HeartGold, and SoulSilver.

The PokeShifter -- a building on Route 15 that is similar to the Poke Park of previous games -- is a mechanism for the transfer of Pokemon from the previous versions that utilizes a mini-game, and allows unrestricted transfers. Gamers will not have to wait 24 hours between transfers, and can move six Pokemon at a go to the new games, using a mini-game that does require a bit of hand-eye coordination.

The mini-game has your transferred Pokemon dodging between bushes, with the gamer having to lob a Poke Ball in order to catch them. The rarer the Pokemon, the faster it jumps, and the harder it is to capture! Not only has Game Freak remembered to provide a means through which to move your favorite Pokemon, they have done it in the form of a fun little game!

The mechanism for the transfer process requires two Nintendo DS units, with the 5th Generation game playing the role of host to the 4th, which will download the application from Black or White. Once the application is run, it interfaces with the 4th Gen game and the transfer process can begin.

Pokemon Black and Pokemon White released in Japan in September 2010, and will release in North America and in the UK on March 6, 2011 for the Nintendo DS platform.