Pokemon Storage

[AZKnight]

One of the corner stones of Pokemon has been widely expanded with the advent of new technology. This is of course collecting Pokemon, be it through catching them yourself in the wild, trading with friends and strangers, and being rewarded for your dedication through promotional events. These methods have always been available from the beginning but they were restrictive. You had to have a link cable to trade with people which meant being in a five-foot radius of each other. There was that wireless attachment me but it was still just wireless and had limitations of you still needing to be physically near each other. It was hard to find people with link cables sometimes and harder to find other people who played Pokemon and wanted to trade Pokemon. Promotional events were even worse because they often took place at locations you could not possibly hope to go to. And when the locations were more reasonable like Toys-R-Us, there was still the problem of getting there and as we got older the problem of embarrassment going to such events. Plus, it was hard to know when and where these events were held. Today we are bless with the internet, wifi and the ability of the Nintendo DS to use both of these. Now you can trade with people down the street, across the country or on the other side of the globe. Events are also easier as many are downloadable in your own home and now Gamestop does the majority of events in America which is far more comfortable going to, especially since you don't have to go inside. Now we can expand our Pokemon collections to levels that were unheard of at the beginning of our journeys. But there is a cost.

I do not know about many of you, but I love restarting my old games and beginning exciting new adventures. There is a game there to play with a plot and goals to reach, guiding you along the way. There is a satisfaction of catching your Pokemon at level 10 and then raising it up to level 60 to face the Champion, facing trainers, Gyms and the Evil Organization to increase your strength. It was something you could either play with now and again when you needed it for trips or waiting in line, or you could get serious by focusing on it with a fresh vigor and trying to do something like catch all the Pokemon or reach level 100. You could go back and replay these adventure over and over again with little to be lost that you could not regain when you restarted. It is not so simple now since Diamond and Pearl followed by Platinum, HeartGold and SoulSilver. Why is that? Because suddenly we can get things that we can't get back if we restart. Your friend might give you a Pokemon that is exclusive to their version, give you Pokemon with good IVs that you will in turn EV train for competitive battling or the Battle Frontier, or a TM that you really need plus many other cases. Those event Pokemon are also precious because they are offered for a limited time and once the event is over, no more. You restart and lose those event Pokemon good luck on finding them again. Sure there are cheating devices like Action Replay, but most of us don't have them and you'd still have to recreate the Pokemon every time you needed/wanted them. The Internet has been a curse and a blessing. We can now train more Pokemon and get rarer ones, expanding the meta/post game experience. In turn we have lost replay value and the stories we fell in love with while playing, never able to restart lest we lose those valuable Pokemon and items.

The only solution I have seen to this is to have a separate game devoted as a storage system / training game. Everything valuable can just be sent to that game for storage while you are free to relay the other copy as many times as you want. This also gives the benefit of being able to send over limited Pokemon and items each time you replay your leisure copy of the game, like Leftovers and TMs and Legendary Pokemon. Then all the event Pokemon you get are sent over there, double fold in fact since you can do it with each copy. I really want to do this eventually but I've put it off because hey, you have to buy another game for a storage system which is pricey. However, I feel I might finally do this with Black & White. In the future if and when this happens, I'd be glad to act as the Community Storage Personnel for anyone else who shares my sentiments about replaying the games. In the meantime, I'm going to transfer all of my valuable Pokemon from either Platinum or HeartGold to the other. Don't know which yet, but I'm leaning toward having Platinum be my fun version and HeartGold where I store my valuables and train competitive Pokemon.

So yeah...just felt like talking about that. Would people be interested in having a Storage Game for a group of us who would use it? Do you share my sentiments about replaying the games? Why or why_not? Have you already done what I'm talking about? Which game should I turn into my storage game? Etc etc?

Edit: Fuck you

[Ninpen]

Why don't you start a new game without saving, or, indeed, closing the game at all?

Charge it while it's sleeping.

[AZKnight]

Then I can't use my DS for anything else. And I'd have to worry about keeping it charged 24/7. It shouldn't be that much of a hassle to just play my Pokemon game any more than my other games.

[N8theGr8]

I can already feel the rage bubbling...

[color=#000000;background:#000000;' onmouseover="this.style.color='#FFFFFF'" onmouseout="this.style.color='#000000']ROMs.[/color]

You have your physical copy for competitive stuff and your [color=#000000;background:#000000;' onmouseover="this.style.color='#FFFFFF'" onmouseout="this.style.color='#000000']ROM[/color] for when you want to play through again. Sure, you could say it lacks the Touch Screen and stuff...but in a game like Pokemon it's not really necessary.

[Maelstrom]

I'm with Fox- er, Knight on this one. I really do love playing through the game and raising a team (usually, a self-traded team so I have exactly who I want the whole way). And i love the pokemon I've ended up catching and raising to fill the dex. All these pokemon eventually add up into a good sized collective for random and fun pokemon battles. Hell, I still have lvl 50 tower battler teams around somewhere. I'm all for a storage game.

[AZKnight]

Yes, but my computer is not exactly as portable as my DS is. Road trips, waiting for class, just feel like it, etc. Those are times that the ROM will not do. To me it also feels entirely different to play the real game on the DS from playing a ROM of it on the computer. Just the way it looks on the screen it was meant to be played on and the layout and interaction with the DS. It's like saying that playing the original Super Mario Bro. on the computer through some ROM hack is as good as playing the original on the NES. No, it is not. Totally different experiences.

Then unlike my Yellow, Silver, Crystal, Emerald, and Leaf Green games, I can now contribute to a competitive side of the games. Before I restart a game if I remember to, I could always send over some items and TMs like Leftovers and Earthquake that are normally limited or hard to earn.