Black & White

[Goldenpelt]

Maybe the player character will be customisable.

Well, the female protagonist does look like the young girl from Battle Revolution.

 

[Clover]

These aren't scans. These are terrible digital pictures. Dammit, is it a requirement that new Pokémon information gets released by something that looks like a cameraphone did it? Don't these people have scanners?

Anyway.

http://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/3/35/CoroCoro_BW4.jpg:
bubble with '1': "Big Change No. 1!"
red and yellow text: "Battle images appear more forceful!"
blue text: "Never-before-seen new pictures of Zorua and Zoroark!"
Can't really make out the red and white text... "The image of the battles [can't think of a better way to put that] has changed dramatically! Pokémon stand in a new way..." and then the kanji gets too blurred to make out :x

http://pokebeach.com/news/0410/corocoro-pokemon-black-white-city.jpg:
"Big Change No. 2!": "The city appears more realistic!"
"Tall buildings: What on earth could lie inside these skyscrapers lining the streets of the city? The first floor looks like a Pokémon Center.
Pokémon Center: Could the Pokémon Center hold a reception desk, or a separate mart?! Could this convenient place hold everything?"
red and white text: "Notice that the setting of the adventure is a new region! Buildings have not stood like this before now; these truly appear three-dimensional. Also, the adventure has not held so much excitement before now!"

http://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/0/0a/CoroCoro_BW3.jpg:
"Big Change No. 3": "Here are the rest of the pictures we've obtained!" (that is not a big change, that is a copout.)
red text: "Here are scenes confirmed to be from the adventure of Pokémon Black and White! It makes the heart pound in anticipation!"
caption: "Could this be the scene familiar to the Pocket Monsters series, the starting town?!"
caption: "There's never been a route of this length before! [something; this is probably where it talks about the different transportation]"

 

[Tailsy]

It looks like anything larger than Zorua will be crammed into that corner to me. *shrug* I just don't think it's necessary for the player pokémon to take up a little over a third of the horizontal space, which is the impression I'm getting from that screenshot.

... I wasn't actually talking about that but sure!

 

[Yarnchu]

http://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/3/35/CoroCoro_BW4.jpg

Holy crap. I did not notice the city in the distance before.

 

[Vriska Serket]

The overworld graphics still look too sprite-like to work well with 3d, if you ask me. :/ I hope they do something to try and remedy that.

From the looks of the pics you can't have Pokémon following you like in HG/SS. Hopefully that feature gets added before the games are released.

 

[Butterfree]

To copy-paste my thoughts from the Cave of Speculative Theories:

It seems like everybody is creaming their pants over the graphics for some reason - am I the only person who thinks it pretty much looks like D/P with a lower perspective? :/ I mean, that's fine and all - it's not like they could have much of a mind-blowing graphical upgrade while staying on the same console - but really, it isn't especially noteworthy.

What I'm far more interested in is the battle screenshot, showing an actual full-body back sprite for Zoroark instead of the partial shots we got before. Even more interestingly, that back sprite looks pixelated, which Zorua's front sprite does not. This leads me to believe that these games will actually show the Pokémon moving across the battlefield when they attack, resizing the sprites as they go nearer or farther away. (See what I mean by there being much, much more interesting stuff here than "omg, slightly more 3D!")

We also don't see a textbox with battle messages or HP bars - presumably that will be moved to the touch screen. Which brings us to the next thing I find interesting here - we see a speech bubble-esque textbox where the female character is speaking to the Pokémart clerk, to make it point to the guy who is speaking. Why would they do that? There is no reason to specifically add something like that to the series as it is. The only reason I can think of to do this is if it isn't always obvious who is speaking, which leaves two possibilities, as far as I can tell:

1. You can talk to people you aren't actually facing using the touch screen. This would also imply the overworld would be on the touch screen.
2. ...or, a much more interesting possibility, you will actually speak sometimes and they need a way to indicate this.

If the player character speaks, maybe these games will be more story-based than the previous ones. It would make sense with the whole hype about a fresh start and a new formula and so on.

 

[Elliekat]

Oh, I really hope the overworld isn't on the Touch Screen. Or if it is, it can be flipped like when you're playing a GBA game on your DS. Because my Touch Screen is really, really scratched up (DARN YOU POKEMON RANGER) and it bothers the heck out of me, so I try to avoid looking at it as much as possible.

 

[Dannichu]

From the looks of the pics you can't have Pokémon following you like in HG/SS. Hopefully that feature gets added before the games are released.

Seconding this - I've only been playing SS for two weeks, and already the trainers in the old games look so lonely ):

 

[Phoenixsong]

I wouldn't write it off entirely. While it's true that we're pretty close to a release if the games are slated for fall of this year, they could still be working things out. The addition was so well-received that I doubt they'd just ditch it outright--they may not have added it at the time those screens were taken, or they may have changed it so that it was optional rather than mandatory... unless they were already very, very far into development when HeartGold and SoulSilver were released, in which case at the time they wouldn't have known the followers would be such a hit. That could mean it'll appear in Spectrum/Gray/Rainbow/whatever, then, if not in Black and White themselves.

 

[Chopsuey]

Seconding this - I've only been playing SS for two weeks, and already the trainers in the old games look so lonely ):

Funny you mentioned this; just the other day I was going to do a trade over Pearl, then I went to my party and switched Cantouchtis (My shiny Machamp) to the first slot so he could be awesome with me. Then, when I exited out of my party I was sad because Cantouchtis wasn't there. D:

 

[Yarnchu]

Am I the only one that doesn't really care if Pokemon follow me? Sure, if there's an option I'll probably turn it on, but I've been playing Pokemon for so long without them following me that it doesn't really matter.

...Though, if they can't follow you, I will miss seeing them be prepared to face the E4 like in HG/SS. ;_;

 

[Jason-Kun]

The game I pick depends solely on whether the American release will keep the titles or not, though for now I'm just gunna go with White. However, in the mean time I'll be waiting for more information to hopefully help with the decision making proccess. Also, am I the only one who dislikes the male sprite?

 

[Yarnchu]

Not actual art for this game, but relevant:

Apparently this is from a book that came out a while back (after D/P I believe) and she's supposedly an unused (at the time of printing) "protagonist" concept. Looks like Gamefreak is reusing this design for the main female, but changing some parts of her outfit since her sprite indicates of her having no sleeves. But at least we got an idea of what her face looks like.

Someone posted this at the Spriter's Resource. It makes sense, since they did revamp early concept of a female character from R/G for the remakes.

BTW, can anyone confirm if this book is real or not?

 

[Blaziking the God General]

Clear pics are clear.

The clearer pics look more 3Dish and pretty cool. Nothing big, but hey, the pics are clear.

EDIT: Now that the pics are clearer, is anyone else getting a sense that we can walk diagonally in these games? Like there is no only up down left or right, but that we can move all over the place?

 

[Tailsy]

By the look of that zoomed-out city picture, I'd say it looks pretty free-roaming. :D It's cute! Of course the cave one doesn't have the same kind of 'feel', hrm...

 

[Shadow Serenity]

You know... the image of the Zoroark battle shows an attack being used, so it seems... That could simply mean that they vanish during the attack like in D/P, not necessarily that they'll be on the bottom.

Also, Zoroark might not be the mascot for Black at all, nor a legendary. I looked in a few places and couldn't come up with exactly who it was so don't quote me on this, but wasn't Lucario the first D/P Pokemon revealed? He's neither the mascot for either version, not a legendary, though admittedly, he's a bit special to obtain.

 

[Blaziking the God General]

Also, Zoroark might not be the mascot for Black at all, nor a legendary. I looked in a few places and couldn't come up with exactly who it was so don't quote me on this, but wasn't Lucario the first D/P Pokemon revealed? He's neither the mascot for either version, not a legendary, though admittedly, he's a bit special to obtain.

Actually, Munchlax was the first Gen. IV pokemon revealed. Your point still holds true, though, since Munchlax wasn't the mascot of either game.

The mascots will probably be some legendaries that we won't find out about until sometime late this summer.

 

[Butterfree]

There is absolutely no reason to think Zoroark is a version mascot and even less of one to think it's a legendary. One would think Lucario would have taught people this, but apparently not. Come on; they've never revealed a version mascot first unless you count Ho-oh's cameo in the first episode of the anime. It doesn't mean they won't, sure, but there is no evidence whatsoever pointing to it being the case here.

 

[Mango]

I will ONLY buy it if they finally fix the problem that they haven't yet introduced a narwhal-based Pokemon yet. When I see a whale with a horn, I'll be convinced. UNTIL THEN, NO DICE.

 

[Bombsii]

I will ONLY buy it if they finally fix the problem that they haven't yet introduced a narwhal-based Pokemon yet. When I see a whale with a horn, I'll be convinced. UNTIL THEN, NO DICE.

OR AH DOLPHINNN.

Maybe THATS why Pokemon games are slowly getting worse and worse.