Pokemon Gotta Catch Em All

The ‘Gotta Catch ‘Em All' slogan has become a thing of the past due to the endless trading that one would have to do to achieve this feat in modern Pokémon games. Conquering this monstrous goal would require one to possess Nintendo’s evolutionary chain of hardware systems, as well as copies of several games throughout the franchise’s rich history. It’s a tremendous effort (unless you’re fortunate enough to have friends willing to aid you in your quest or get very lucky trading online), and so this target has been overlooked by many.

Nonetheless, producer Junichi Masuda and director Shigeru Ohmori have now explained that getting your hands on all 719 of these critters is not as Farfetch'd as it used to be, as this is achievable within just the Hoenn and Kalos regions. Here’s an extract from an interview with GameXplain:

YouTube Video
Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube794k
Watch on YouTube

[The Soar ability] allows you to land in places you can’t normally walk or Surf to. And in these new places, you’ll encounter a lot of new Pokémon, not previously seen in the Hoenn region that you can catch. What this does for us, is it allows players who only have the 3DS games – being X and Y, and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire – to complete the National Pokédex with just the two different series of games.

On the subject of interviews, Mr Ohmori has shed further interesting insight, this time about how Game Freak chooses which Pokémon receive the honorary call to Mega Evolve. Here’s what he had to say after GameXplain posed the question:

In terms of how we determine which Pokémon get a Mega Evolution – of course Mega Evolutions were introduced in X and Y, and we’re adding a lot more this time around – and we’ve been monitoring how people have been playing the game: what Pokémon they’re using for tournaments, and even the online rating battles. So seeing which Pokémon are prominently used a lot, we’ll come up with ways just to improve the balance and shake things up. For example, we come up with Mega Evolutions that can counter these Pokémon to improve the battle experience. And that’s one of the reasons we choose Mega Evolutions.

Other than that, some of the game designers at Game Freak really want to work on certain Pokémon, so they’ll of course choose some. Or, from a story perspective, which Pokémon will make sense – so we’ll choose some that way, as well. We’ll also take into consideration fan favourites – which Pokémon fans would be excited to see Mega Evolve. It’s really a mixture of methods in how we choose which Pokémon have Mega Evolutions.

To summarise, certain Pokémon are chosen to Mega Evolve if it improves balance in the competitive battling scene, they’re a staff/fan favourite, or if it makes sense from a storyline perspective.

The build-up to Pokémon ORAS has been exciting thanks to more news, revelations, and insights such as these that are scattered throughout the internet kitchen for Poké-holics to chow-down on. At least now there is some more instantly-accessible depth in the latest instalment of Pokémon games, with players feeling more encouraged to explore in the main adventure as opposed to rinsing their 3DS battery via Wi-Fi battles. Furthermore, the competitive battling scene should feel a lot more balanced, with an increase of fans’ favourites receiving their Super Saiyan-esc forms. It’s certainly an electrifying time to be a Pokémon fan.

Let us know what you think of these developer comments, while the full interview is below.

[source youtube.com, via gamnesia.com]