Welcome to Modojo, 
Pokemon Diamond Preview
Written by Ryan Morgan on Wednesday, April 11, 2007
"I always wanted to touch me a lil' Charmander." Ryan Morgan goes hands-on with Pokemon Diamond and Pearl.
As April 22nd draws near, DS owners in North America are faced with a very tough question: How do you find time to re-visit a trusty GBA Pokemon cartridge while addicted to Puzzle Quest? After all, Diamond and Pearl will finally provide the opportunity to hop online with that team you were building in Emerald and kick some pocket monster butt, so you don't want to risk being embarrassed by 12-year old Pokemon addicts who've been battling their friends for years... do you?
Since covering the DS's first real Pokemon game(s) in January, I had the opportunity to try out the demo at GDC and happily came away quite impressed. High-quality graphics have never been a strong suit for the series, but Diamond and Pearl are clearly an upgrade from the days of the Game Boy Advance. Using a clean-looking 3D engine, the game is seen from an almost top-down perspective that manages to bring things to life while retaining the classic Pokemon look. The battles, as you probably inferred from screenshots, are still the same partially animated battle sequences, completely understandable when you consider that a single cartridge needs to hold animations for a huge movepool and 493 different monsters.
Quite a bit of other exciting news has surfaced since the earlier preview, the most important being details on trading and connectivity. Players will be able to hop onto a Wi-Fi connection and explore the Sinnoh underground with a pal, battle against other trainers or trade Pokemon with gamers the world over. Having a GBA Pokemon in your DS will allow transferring up to 6 monsters a day (who then need to be caught in Diamond/Pearl before use). The upload limit seems odd until you consider that it will allow new players to catch up a bit so that they have a chance to compete online. Besides this trading function, each GBA game has a unique set of Pokemon associated with it, causing them to show up at certain places in-game when the cartridge is in the GBA slot.
Not that more exciting information is really necessary, but I also got the chance to try out Pokemon Battle Revolution for Wii at GDC, and it's looking very fun indeed. Showing off the ability to use the DS (via Wi-Fi) as a controller, I was able to completely demolish random GDC opponents without them being able to see what move I'd picked until it was too late. I also found out that up to 8 DS's can be used at once, allowing a small tournament to occur in glorious 3D.
I'm not sure where along the line Pokemon became a game for young teenagers (it might have something to do with the anime), but any of you who believe the hype will be missing out on the most solid entry in a very solid series come April 22nd. Ignore the naysayers, pre-order a copy, and get ready join the fray that's sure to ensue over Wi-Fi later this month.
