New Pokémon games announced

Pokémon Black 2 & Pokémon White 2

By this point, you can set your watch to the Pokémon franchise. They’ll come out with a new generation of games, then they’ll eventually make a third, ‘better’, version of that generations game, and somewhere in the middle they’ll remake one of the earlier games on a more up to date console.

The current announcement concerns the middle of those three options, with a third game to fit into the Black & White versions triangle, however, this time everything has not gone exactly to everyone’s expectations. As soon as Black and White versions were even announced, everyone with a throat was screaming that their third version was going to be called ‘Grey Version’, or ‘Gray’ if you’re weird.

The people at Gamefreak decided that they wanted to make everyone wrong and instead announced Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2. Like the previous third versions since Crystal, the game alters it’s plot so that the game centres around a different legendary Pokémon than either of the two on the covers of the first two games.

The mascot Pokémon for Black 2 and White 2 is Kyurem (Pictured above in its appearances for this game, looking like a hybrid of itself and the original mascots, and below in it’s original form). The appearance of this Pokémon reinforced most commenter’s beliefs that Grey would be the third game in the 5th Pokémon Generation. For some reason though, the people at Game Freak decided to go another way and instead alter the Pokémon’s appearance so to give it two different forms to correspond to the two different games.

This is another step from the norm for the Pokémon franchise, I doubt anyone really saw this coming. Plus these are the first game(s) in the series main franchise to have a number in the title. So far not much is know about the games other than it is to be available for all Nintendo DS systems and gamers who play it on a DSi and a 3DS will get access to extra features.

I’m a fan of the Pokémon franchise, and have been looking forward to this announcement since I first finished playing through my Pokémon Black Version. While many would criticize the release of a third version of what is essentially the same game, the previous generations extra games such as Emerald and Platinum brought a lot of interesting changes as well as buckets full of end game content for people who have beaten the game’s main story.

For people who are big fans of the series, the third version is usually the polished and superior version of the generation and is always worth picking up if you spend as many hours playing these games as I do.

Pokémon Black 2 & Pokémon White 2 are set for a Japanese release in June of this year. Details for the Western release to follow. Edit: Nintendo of Europe have made an announcement stating that Black 2 and White 2 will see a Autumn release.